


Dillinger's Got Nothing on Us: The Short Life and Interesting Times of the Jay Gang

by tsukinobara



Series: Dillinger's Got Nothing on Us [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Actually kind of gen, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, Historical AU, It's 'cause I love the cars, M/M, Oh my god so much research, the Gangster Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobara/pseuds/tsukinobara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1932. Jensen is broke, unemployed, and living with his friend Chris in Chris' sister's house in San Antonio. It's the depths of the Depression and their prospects are slim. Then Jensen meets Jared and Jared's friend Chad at a block party, and one night the four boys hit on an immediate way to make money - hold up a bank. They think they have a plan, but what actually happens is something none of them were remotely prepared for.</p><p>Everyone's heard of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd. No one has ever heard of the Jay Gang. This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dillinger's Got Nothing on Us: The Short Life and Interesting Times of the Jay Gang

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for potentially anachronistic language, misuse and abuse of actual historical events, non-CW actors, and Chad Michael Murray. Also some gun violence but nothing too graphic. And way more characters than will fit under "Characters".

The early 1930s was a golden age for American gangsters, and everyone knows their names. John Dillinger. Bonnie and Clyde. Pretty Boy Floyd. Machine Gun Kelly. Less well-known, although not unsuccessful, is a group of four men who the local papers dubbed the Jay Gang.

In comparison to the shifting, sometimes family-tree membership rosters of their contemporaries – the Dillinger Gang, the Barrow Gang, the Barkers – the Jay Gang was only ever composed of four men: Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Chris Kane, and Chad Michael "Mayhem" Murray. Unlike other gangs of the day, this group was not known by the name of its leader, and none of the members were famous as individuals. It was a year after their first robbery before anyone knew who they were, and they were called "the Jay Gang" because of something one of them yelled in that very first bank.

Also unlike their more famous fellow bank robbers, the Jay Gang did not have a support network of criminal friends, family, and colleagues. They had friends to help and hide them – Steve Carlson, Jason and Krista Manns, Danneel Harris – but they had no one to call if they needed an associate to drive a getaway car, launder stolen money, rent an apartment to hide in, or help knock over a bank. They seem to have worked in a kind of bubble, aware of their contemporaries but completely detached from them.

Perhaps because of this bubble, the birth and much of the life of the Jay Gang is shrouded in mystery. Nothing in their individual histories suggested they would turn to such a major violent crime. Neither Jensen nor Chris had criminal records. Jared and Chad had both served time in a reformatory, for crimes ranging from joyriding to car theft to threatening a man with an unloaded pistol, but had stayed out of documented trouble since then. So what induced them to start robbing banks?

The best that can be said – the most accurate information to be had – is that the four men who would spend a year and a half robbing the banks of the midwest first came together in San Antonio very late in 1932, at a block party partly organized by Chris Kane's sister Jennifer.

  
_December 1932  
San Antonio_   


  


San Antonio, Jensen thinks, is not Dallas. It's smaller, for one thing. It feels different, for another – more southern, more western. It has, as Chris is fond of pointing out, a lot of pretty girls. It has Chris' sister Jennifer and her husband, instead of Jensen's mom and dad and grandparents. It has the Alamo, to which Jensen drags Chris mostly so he can send his grandfather a postcard to tell him that he did.

What it does not have – any more than does Dallas – is steady work.

Chris and Jensen came out here a few months ago on the theory that they'd have a better chance at employment and that Jennifer and her husband were well-equipped and eager to have them. They've worked a few temporary jobs – a couple days here, a couple days there, a week or two every so often – but nothing long-term, and certainly nothing permanent. Chris has even started talking about fighting again, looking for bare-knuckle bouts in abandoned warehouses and empty lots and the back rooms of bars. It's something he did back in Dallas and in Oklahoma, and while the purses were never quite worth the pain, the boys could sometimes make decent money off bets. Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, but Jensen isn't sure they're that desperate yet.

"You know Jennifer would kill us both," he says. "You for doing it and me for letting you."

"Could go to El Paso," Chris muses.

"You go. I'll stay here and keep my nuts intact."

"Take a day or two to get there, couple days to find some fights, a day or two home. We won't even be gone a week. I know a guy – "

"A couple days and a couple days and a couple days is a week. I'm not going with you. If the shit hits the fan, you end up in Mexico, and then your sister will have my head. She scares me."

Besides, it's too close to Christmas, which means it's too close to New Year's Eve, which means that Jennifer, who is helping to organize a neighborhood block party for the Thursday between the two holidays, would notice if the boys went missing. She needs them to fetch and carry and run errands and help her recruit participants and just generally render assistance.

Jensen doesn't mind too much – it keeps him and Chris busy, and he owes Jennifer and her husband a lot for letting him sleep on their spare room and eat their food – but every so often he wishes it was work for money.

He calls his parents on Christmas Day, after lunch, when he knows they'll be home, and very carefully does not tell his mother that he doesn't have a job. His father had already lost his job when Jensen left Dallas and his grandfather only gets a tiny pension, but his sister is actually employed. He's a little embarrassed he hasn't found work, but mostly he doesn't want his mother to worry.

"Put Jennifer on the phone," she says, after fifteen minutes of him making stuff up and her apparently only pretending to believe him. "I thought I taught you not to lie to me."

"Sorry," he says sheepishly. "I don't want you and Dad to worry."

"I'm your mother, Jensen, that's what we do. Now let me wish Jennifer a Merry Christmas."

"Saw through your bullshit, huh," Chris smirks, watching Jensen hand over the phone and sink into the couch.

"She's gonna send me money, Chris. She doesn't _have_ money."

"Tell her not to bankroll us," Chris calls out to his sister. Jennifer flaps her hand at him in the universal signal for "Be quiet, I'm on the phone." He punches Jensen in the shoulder. "El Paso, man."

"Still think it's a bad idea. Besides, we got the block party in a few days. We can't leave until we drink your brother-in-law's beer."

Jennifer's husband, unique among all the Texans Jensen has ever known, does not drink. He does however know the kind of people who can smuggle several cases of Mexican beer and liquers over the border, in preparation for his wife's neighborhood shindig.

On Thursday afternoon, Jennifer sends Chris out to beg, borrow, or buy ice, more coffee, and some cocoa. The plan as she explains it is to doctor the coffee and hot cocoa with the coffee liquer her husband procured. She's still not sure how to offer beer without looking so obviously like she's offering beer. Prohibition is still in effect, after all. Both Jensen and Chris remind her that cops like a good drink as much as anyone else and she shouldn't worry about it.

Jensen is tasked with helping hang paper lanterns on the trees and from front porches, to make the neighborhood look festive. He has never considered himself a short man, but the fact that neither Jennifer nor her husband can find a ladder is making things difficult. He finally has to resort to dumping out an old wooden crate full of tools, hardware, and car parts, and has just arranged it under a tree when someone who sounds like Chris sneaks up behind him and asks "You need some help?"

Surprised, he drops the lantern he was holding. "Dammit, Chris, don't do that." He turns around. It's not Chris. It's someone a lot taller than Chris.

"Who's Chris?" the guy asks. He picks up the lantern and holds it out. Fortunately it hasn't ripped. "I'm Jared. Looks like you need a hand."

Jared is tall – Jensen can kind of look down at him but Jensen is also standing on a crate – and broad-shouldered and good-looking, and his cheerful grin makes him look as if he thinks helping Jensen hang these things is the most exciting activity he could possibly be doing right now.

"No, I got it," Jensen says. "But thanks." He manages to get the lantern on a branch and climbs off the crate. Now he has to look up at the guy, if only a little bit. He glances down and yeah, the guy's wearing cowboy boots with heels. "On second thought, yeah, I can use the help. I'm staying with my friend's sister and she doesn't have a ladder."

"I'll be your ladder. Oh, wait, I got a better idea." He turns and yells "Sandy!" across the street, and a girl with bouncy brown hair and a bright red coat trots over. "You wanna be a ladder?"

"Are you pulling a prank on someone?" she asks, smiling. Her tone is affectionate. Jensen wonders if she's Jared's girlfriend. They don't look alike enough to be related.

"I volunteered to help this guy – " He jabs his thumb in Jensen's direction.

"Jensen," Jensen supplies, suddenly realizing he never introduced himself.

" – Jensen hang lanterns. We can do it if you sit on my shoulders."

"Ok." She holds out her hand for Jensen to shake. "I'm Sandy. It's nice to meet you."

"Me too," Jared adds, still grinning.

"Ok," Jensen says. "Let's do this thing."

While they're hanging lanterns, Jensen learns that Sandy is not actually Jared's girlfriend, that she just got a job as a secretary, that she and Jared have been friends since they were thirteen, and that Jared is very possibly the most cheerful person she's ever met.

Jensen also learns that Jared was caught stealing cars when he was younger, that his best friend Chad once threatened a man with an unloaded pistol for being inappropriate with Chad's sister, that he likes Laurel and Hardy and Bela Lugosi and thinks Mae Clarke is the most beautiful woman who ever lived, and no one can bake a peach pie like his mother.

Jensen is a little disappointed when they hang the final lantern and he realizes he has to go back to Jennifer's house to see if she needs any more help. He really hasn't met many people since he and Chris got here – really hasn't met anyone, in fact – and he's a little surprised but mostly pleased that he feels so comfortable so soon with Jared and Sandy. Well, with Jared, actually.

"You're gonna be at the block party, right?" Jared asks, and then Jensen feels stupid. Of course. It's not like they'll never get another chance to see each other.

"I have to." Jensen grins. "I just hung all these lanterns."

"I think you'll remember that _I_ hung all the lanterns."

"Excuse me," Sandy says, smacking Jared on the arm. "Who sat on your shoulders for two hours, lurching back and forth? It's a good thing I don't get seasick."

"Fine. _We_ hung the lanterns." Jared kisses the top of her head and she smacks his arm again.

"I have to go find my brother and make sure he eats. Don't let Chad get you into too much trouble. It was nice to meet you," she tells Jensen, waving at both him and Jared as she walks off down the street.

"Food would be good," Jared says. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

"Yeah," Jensen agrees. He can feel the corners of his mouth pulling up in half a smile, and for once he's actually grateful to Jennifer for volunteering him to help.

The block party turns out to be, essentially, several streets' worth of open house. People open their front doors, pull tables and chairs onto their lawns or the sidewalk, set up drinks and food and card games, drag record players in front of open windows, and organize games for any kids who might get bored running from house to house. Jensen doesn't know what to credit – sheer bloodymindedness, feminine wiles, neighborliness, the goodwill of the Christmas season – but however they did it, Jennifer and the couple of other women who organized the party managed to coax food and drink and festive decorations out of people with little or no money to spare at a time when good cheer is in short supply. He only counts two houses with their lights off.

A middle-aged widower a few houses down the street from Jennifer's place has put out a giant pot of chili and is ladling it into bowls for his neighbors, and this is where Jensen and Chris run into Jared.

"Jensen, right?" Jared says around a spoon by way of greeting. "Don't my lanterns look good?" He grins.

"Sandy's lanterns," Jensen corrects him. "This is my friend Chris. His sister is the reason I was trying to hang those damn things in the first place. Chris, Jared. Jared, Chris."

Jared points to the two guys standing next to him with his spoon. "Jeff – he's my brother, as if his striking good looks weren't a dead giveaway – "

"Chad Michael Murray," interrupts Jared's other friend, sticking out his hand for Jensen to shake. He's wearing brown gloves, the leather cool and soft against Jensen's palm. "Anything this gorilla told you about me? All true."

"Even the story about the Governor's wife and the cow and the ‘27 Auburn." Jared digs into his chili again. "Did you try this? This is great."

"Four bowls so far," the widower tells Jensen and Chris. Jensen is pretty sure he's met the man before but can't remember his name.

"What? I'm a growing boy."

Jared's brother laughs. "You'll still be growing when you're forty," he says.

"Yes I will. Here, try it," He shoves his half-empty bowl at Jensen, who takes it, surprised.

"You have fun with your new friends," Chris says, slapping Jensen on the back. "I'm gonna go drink some drinks and eat some cake and talk to some pretty girls."

"Mind if I come along?" Jeff asks. "I can't get near anything with my brother around."

"Yeah, sure. Chris Kane, nice to meet you."

Fifteen minutes later Jensen has finished Jared's chili, Jared has been forcibly removed from this particular front lawn, and Chad has fallen off the sidewalk. Jared cannot stop laughing and even though he knows it's rude, Jensen can't either.

They eventually run into Chris again – Jeff having apparently gone home – and the four of them end up at the house of one of Jared's friends from high school, sitting in the kitchen playing cards. Chad whips Chris' ass at poker but Chris gets him back by drinking him under the table – this is not difficult, as Chad is kind of a lightweight – and when Chad is passed out, Chris just rifles through his wallet and takes the money back.

"You can't cheat a Kane at cards," he says.

"A truth universally acknowledged," Jared adds, sagely.

"Damn straight." Then, "What the hell you talking about?"

For some reason Jensen finds this hysterically funny. He has to put his head down on the table, he's laughing so hard. He can hear Jared join him, and by the time he's caught his breath enough that he can lift his head, Chris is laughing at both of them.

"I like you," Chris tells Jared. "You make him laugh." He jabs his thumb in Jensen's direction. "Ready for another round?"

"Damn straight," Jared says, and giggles.

It's so late it's early by the time Jensen and Chris stagger back to Jennifer's house, their arms around each other's shoulders, singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" at the tops of their lungs. Jensen falls face-first onto the couch without even bothering to take off his coat – he's just intending to pull his boots off - and he thinks he can hear Chris telling him get up, man, don't sleep on the couch, but he's unconscious before he can make much sense of it.

He wakes up to a hangover, which is not surprising, and the smell of frying grease and boiling coffee. He falls off the couch, gets tangled in his coat, and eventually stumbles into the kitchen, where Jennifer's husband is cheerfully cracking eggs one-handed into a frying pan.

"Morning, sunshine," he says, waving at a chair with his spatula. "Just in time for eggs and toast. Jennifer went to work" – Jensen thinks he can detect a note of surprise – "and Christian's still in bed. Coffee's ready, help yourself."

Jennifer's husband is not generally very talkative, and after this initial welcome and a question as to whether Jensen wants his eggs over-easy or sunny-side-up (Jensen's stomach doesn't want either, thank you), he shuts up. Jensen dumps milk and some sugar in his coffee and drinks it slowly. He realizes he's sitting at the kitchen table in his coat and boots and the clothes he wore yesterday, but he can't bring himself to care.

By that afternoon his hangover has worn off enough for him to realize he'd like to see Jared again, but has no idea how to find him. It's been a while since Jensen made any new friends he liked enough to pursue – he was a shy boy all through school and only recently, with Chris' prodding, has he been able to get out of his shell enough to approach people, instead of waiting for them to approach him. But asking around in search of a tall boy named Jared who likes to eat and who has a brother named Jeff is still a little more approaching than he's really prepared for.

The problem is solved for him not a couple hours later. He and Chris and Jennifer and her husband have just finished dinner when the doorbell rings. Jennifer gets up to answer it, returning a minute later to tell Jensen it's for him.

It's Jared.

"Uh. Hi," Jensen says, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I asked around," Jared answers, like that should be obvious. "You were kind of hard to find." Jared is clearly more socially aggressive than Jensen is. Right now, Jensen doesn't mind. "What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"What's tomorrow night?"

"New Year's Eve!" Jared grins. Jensen feels stupid because apparently he no longer knows what day it is.

"Oh. I don't know. Jennifer's having some friends over."

"Come to Chad's house. Well, his dad's house. Hey, that rhymes. He's having a party. There'll be drinking, dancing, pretty girls, cards, noisemakers, hopefully some food.... You'll probably have to put up with his brothers and sister, but they're ok. Bring Chris. Jeff liked him."

"Sounds like fun. Thanks."

"Come by at nine, maybe. Chad has to get rid of his dad," he explains conspiratorially. "Go home whenever you're ready to go home. Chad wants everyone to get dressed up, but you don't have to dress like movie stars or anything. It should be a good time. Have a good night, yeah? I'll see you tomorrow." He turns to leave.

"Jared, wait," Jensen says, stopping him. "Where does Chad live?"

"Oh, of course." Jared smacks himself on the forehead. "207 Keyes Road. It's a couple streets that way – " he waves vaguely west " – and a couple streets down. Do you have a street map? I'm not great with directions. Murray, they're in the phone book."

"Jensen!" Chris calls from inside the house. "Invite your boyfriend in for coffee!" Jensen scrunches up his face and blushes, embarrassed. Jared just laughs.

"Jeff does that to me too," he says. "See you tomorrow night." He waves as he walks away down the street.

"Jesus, Chris," Jensen complains as he goes back inside the house and shuts the door behind him. "He was asking us to a New Year's party."

"You made a friend," Jennifer says, delighted. "Tell me about him," she adds over her shoulder as she carries dirty dishes into the kitchen. Her reaction makes Jensen feel like he's seven years old and just home from his first day at a new school. Why doesn't she do that to her own brother?

"He's, um, kind of pushy."

"Good pushy? Bad pushy?"

"Pushy enough to find me." He shrugs. He guesses that falls under the category of "good pushy". "Drinks, pretty girls, and cards," he tells Chris. "Sounds like your kind of party."

"Might be fun," Chris agrees. "I'm glad you're making friends, man." Jensen rolls his eyes. It's not as if Chris has been out there winning friends and influencing people. "Seriously. You can't stand in my shadow the rest of your life."

"That's funny, shorty." Jensen straightens up as much as he can, so he can look down at Chris a little bit. He really isn't that much taller, but just enough so that he can sometimes tease Chris about being short.

Chris snorts and punches Jensen on the arm. "You didn't spend an hour walking around with the tallest man in San Antonio," he says. "Those boys come from a family of giants, I tell you what."

"You were going to tell me about him," Jennifer calls from the kitchen. "And give me some help in here!"

The next night, as he's getting dressed, Jensen realizes he only has one good suit, as compared to a few decent but fairly ordinary suits. It will have to do. He borrows a silk tie and a nice hat from Jennifer's husband. Chris ties his hair back. Jennifer makes both of them polish their shoes.

"It's a house party, not the Stork Club," Chris mutters.

They walk to Chad's father's house, where Jensen is surprised to see paper lanterns hanging from the front porch, just like the ones he and Jared and Sandy hung for Jennifer all over the neighborhood. They might even be the same ones. The party is already in full swing by the time he and Chris arrive, with people even spilling into the back yard. Chad appears at the door, takes their coats, and points them towards the buffet with its serving platters of baked goods and sandwiches and its giant punch bowl.

"There's Pearl in the kitchen," he whispers. "Tom's brother works for Alamo Foods." And then he vanishes with the coats, leaving Jensen and Chris standing in the front hall. Jensen feels conspicuous. He takes off his hat. This is always the worst part of arriving at a party where you don't really know anyone.

Jared, perhaps unsuprisingly, comes to their rescue.

"Jensen! Chris! I'm so glad you made it!" He grabs each of them in a brief if bone-crushing hug. "I'm completely sober," he adds, grinning. "Just excited. I'll introduce you to everyone."

They meet Jared and Chad's friends, Chad's sister, one of his brothers, and a girl Chad is chasing, a pretty thing named Kenzie who works at her mother's dress shop. They drink punch and eat cake and Sandy even manages to get Chris to dance with her, if just for one song. A girl in a blue dress who introduces herself as Alexis drags Jensen into the cleared-off space that's serving as a dance floor and despite his protestations that he can't dance, no, really, he has two left feet, she keeps him out there for a good twenty minutes.

He finally begs off and ends up at the kitchen table playing cards. The girlfriend of one of Jared's friends is either an exceptionally talented poker player or an exceptionally talented cheat, because she beats Chris three games in a row and he can't even figure out how to be mad at her.

At midnight they toast the new year with black market Pearl beer and Chris, to Jensen's great surprise, kisses him full on the mouth.

"I'll beat your ass, you tell anyone I did that," Chris says, but he's grinning, and Jensen just laughs.

"I know what you wanna do to my ass," he teases. Chris swats at him affectionately.

He gets a kiss on the cheek from Sandy, a kiss from Alexis with the blue dress, a kiss from Chad's little sister, much to Chad's annoyance, and another bear hug from Jared.

"I have this tradition," Jared says. "I always spend New Year's Eve with the people I want to spend the new year with. Thanks for coming."

"It's a good tradition. Thanks for inviting me."

Later on Jensen repeats Jared's tradition to Chris, who agrees that it's a good one and if Jensen was even thinking about spending the next year without him, Chris will tan his hide.

"You and my ass," Jensen says, laughing. "Anyone would think you were interested in it."

He loses Chris to a running poker game and at three in the morning finds himself sitting on the front steps with Jared, talking about movies and cars and their families and Jared's dogs. Jared is wearing the hat Jensen borrowed from Jennifer's husband, and Jensen has Sandy's red scarf draped around his neck. It's an animated conversation, partly because they're talking about things that interest them, but also because it's a new year and they're new friends and they're surrounded by happy, excited people and the two of them are just enjoying each other's company. The fact that they're both well-lubricated with punch and beer and sugar doesn't hurt.

For the first time since he and Chris left Dallas, Jensen is actually really glad he came to San Antonio.

He and Chris close out this party the same way they closed out Jennifer's block party two nights earlier – stumbling back to Jennifer's house as the sky begins to lighten, both of them drunk off their asses, their arms around each other, singing "Auld Lang Syne" loudly but miraculously still in tune. Chris can only remember four lines and keeps interrupting Jensen to tell him that, so they end up singing those same four lines over and over all the way back to the house. Jensen is still wearing Sandy's scarf, but at least he got his hat back.

This time he makes it into the spare bedroom and remembers to take his coat off before he falls onto the bed, his last thought being that if tonight was any indication, 1933 should be a much better year than 1932.

  
_January-February 1933  
Texas, Oklahoma_   


  


He doesn't realize it at the time, but Jensen's life starts to change on a Wednesday in the middle of January, because that is when Chris and Jennifer learn that their uncles' farm in Oklahoma, which had been homesteaded by great-grandaddy Kane, was foreclosed on and taken by the bank.

Chris is furious – at the government, at the weather, at the bank, at the Oklahoma soil, even at his uncles for sinking money they didn't have on a farm that evidently couldn't sustain it and for not telling anyone they might lose it.

"They'd never ask for help," Jensen tells him. "I don't even know them and I know that."

And the fact is, even if Chris' uncles did ask, no one has the money to help them.

"Fucking _banks_ ," Chris spits. He's pacing back and forth across the kitchen, Jensen pacing with him. They can hear Jennifer in the front room, talking to her husband on the phone. She doesn't sound any happier than Chris does.

This goes on for a good twenty minutes, Chris getting increasingly worked up and Jensen getting increasingly exhausted trying to calm him down. Turns out, twenty minutes is more than enough time for Chris to start ranting about other things that have been bothering him. (For some reason, Jensen's father's continued unemployment is one of those things.) Jennifer gets off the phone and comes into the kitchen.

And then the doorbell rings. Twice. There's a good hard knock. This is not a good time to be receiving visitors, but whoever it is clearly won't be ignored. Jensen stomps into the front room and yanks the door open.

"What, dammit?" he snaps. Jared's standing on the steps, looking surprised. "What do you want?"

" _The Mummy_ is showing at the Texas," Jared says. "I thought you might want to go tomorrow. The matinees are cheaper than the evening shows."

Seeing Jared, and being reminded that people are still living normal lives and doing things for fun, calms Jensen down a little bit and clears his head enough for him to remember a way to get the increasing crazy out of Chris' system before he starts breaking things.

"Not today," he tells Jared apologetically. "Sorry, man, but we got some bad news and I have to make sure Chris doesn't kill anyone."

"Shit, I'm sorry, what happened?"

"Family stuff. It's not my family, I can't talk about it. Next week, maybe, ok?"

"Yeah, sure." Jared's expression is an odd combination of disappointed and worried. "Hope everything works out."

"Yeah, me too. See you later." And he shuts the door practically in Jared's face. He knows it might be rude, but there are more important things. "Chris!" he yells into the kitchen. "Don't go out the back!"

Chris and Jennifer are now sitting at the kitchen table. Jennifer is writing something on a pad of paper and holding Chris' wrist with her other hand. Chris is vibrating in his chair, obviously desperate to get up and move but caught until his sister lets him go.

"I got it," Jensen tells her. "You can let go of him." Jennifer shakes her head, her eyes on the pad of paper. She squeezes Chris' wrist. "Don't worry about him, I know what to do."

"I do too," she says. "That's why I'm holding on to him."

"You can trust Jensen," Chris says. "He keeps me out of trouble."

"Fine." She lets go of his wrist. "Don't kill anyone. I'm as upset as you are and I'm not in the mood to get you out of jail."

Because the one thing you can do for Chris in this situation is to find him a fight. And that is what Jensen is going to do.

It was easy in Dallas and it's no more difficult here, to find a find a place to drink, to maybe order something, to insult or offend or just plain piss someone off. Jensen doesn't like to start fights, but he's good enough with his fists to help end them. Or, if Chris is involved, to get out of the way and let them run their course.

Usually this kind of thing ends with people getting tossed into the street. In occasions such as these, when the boys are actively looking for someone to throw down, that usually means them.

But it also means Chris isn't breaking anything in his sister's house, and if they can plan it right, it also means he can work the violence out of his system without ending up in jail. Which, to Jensen's great relief, is what happens. Of course they're both a little beat up by the time they finally make it back to Jennifer's house, but they do make it back.

Chris is still pissed off the next day, but at least he's thinking of ways to put that anger to good use that don't involve punching people in the face. And if sometimes those ways turn out to be "taking Chad's money during poker games", well, Chris claims that he deserves to have the money and Chad deserves to lose it.

But Chad isn't all that flush, even though he likes to pretend he is, and more often than not, the boys end up playing – literally – for peanuts.

"This has to stop," Chad mutters one night, flicking a couple of peanuts towards the pile in the middle of the table. They're sitting in Jennifer's kitchen. After the news about the uncles, she has made a point of keeping an eye on her brother, and if that means he has to bring Jensen's new friends to her house, so be it. "I hate playing for peanuts. Call."

Chris shows his hand – three jacks and two eights. "Full house. Show ‘em."

"Shit." Chad drops his cards on the table and swats at Jared, who tries to steal some of his peanuts.

"Well?"

" _Peanuts_." He sweeps the rest of his off the table and into his hand and pops a couple in his mouth. Then he reaches for Jared's glass and takes a swig. Jared reaches across the table – it's not a very big table and he has very long arms – grabs Jensen's glass, and drains it.

"Hey!" Jensen protests. Chris pushes his drink in front of Jensen and idly flicks a peanut across the table. It hits Chad in the forehead and Chad, of course, leans forward, grabs a handful from the pot, and fires them back.

Ten minutes later there are peanuts and playing cards all over the floor, and the four boys are laughing at themselves and each other. Jennifer sticks her head in the door, sees the mess, and just reminds them to clean up before going back to the front room.

But half an hour after that, they're tired of their rinky-dink poker games and the mood of the evening has changed.

"All we ever do is play cards, slouch around town, and look for work," Jensen observes. "I need a job. I need to be making money." He needs to be paying his way. Jennifer not-so-gently suggested that he and Chris both make "Find gainful employment" their one New Year's resolution, but so far neither of them has had any luck sticking to it. Jensen doesn't want to have to go back to Dallas. He doesn't want to have to count his time in San Antonio as a failure.

"I need to play better," Chad mutters.

"You need to stop cheating," Jared tells him. "If you didn't cheat so much we could at least play for real money."

"We could if we had any real money."

"And that right there is the problem," Jensen points out. He gestures with his now-empty glass.

"Banks got money," Chris says, sounding resentful.

"Then we'll take it from the banks," Chad suggests, as if that's the most logical solution in the world.

"Banks got security," Jared says. "And vaults and... stuff."

"We'll wear handkerchiefs over our faces. Like train robbers."

"We'll need guns," Jensen adds. It sounds like a stupid idea but he's in the mood to take Chad seriously. When the other three just stare at him, he explains himself with "So the tellers know we mean business. They don't have to be loaded."

Jared looks at Chad and snickers. Chad smacks him.

But no one puts up an argument, so the conversation continues in that direction until Jennifer comes into the kitchen wearing her robe and shoos Jared and Chad out of her house. The idea sticks and grows and it only takes another day before it's a full-fledged – if highly criminal – plan. Jensen wants to blame it on the fact that they came up with it while they were drinking and bored. Jared wants to blame Chad. But it's Chris who strolls into the Frost Bank downtown pretending he wants to open an account, just so he can get an idea of the layout and security (or lack thereof) without arousing suspicion.

This time they meet in Jeff's apartment to make their final plans, because Jeff and his wife both work during the day and no one will be around to overhear. Chris draws a sketch of the bank layout on a piece of paper, and Jared finds a street map in one of the kitchen drawers so they can plan an escape route.

"I've been in that bank," Chad says. He sounds surprised. "I could've gone in to look it over."

"One of us will have to stay in the car," Jensen says, ignoring him.

"That can be Chad," Jared offers. When Chad gives him a look, Jared adds "You're probably the best driver."

"I'll do it," Chris says. "They've seen my face."

"Then you should go in," Jensen tells him. "I don't want all of us to be recognizable."

"You'll be disguised, remember?"

"You're probably better in a crisis than he is," Jared says, jerking his thumb in Chad's direction.

"I'm good in a crisis," Chad objects.

"I hit in a crisis," Chris says. "I'm driving, Jen. End of discussion."

Chad volunteers to acquire the getaway car, at least, and the next day he collects Jensen and Chris in a new-looking green Ford.

"Don't ask where he got it," Jared says from the back seat, as Jensen climbs in next to him and Chad scoots across the front so Chris can drive. There are a couple of burlap sacks on the floor in the back.

Chris drops them off in front of the bank. The plan is for him to drive around the corner and come right back to get them. The other three pull bandannas over their faces like Wild West stagecoach robbers before they get out of the car. There's a little blonde girl with her hair in pigtails sitting on a bench across the street. She watches the boys climb out of the car, and when Jensen glances around to make sure no one's paying attention to them, he catches her eye by accident and she waves. He thinks she's grinning, and he grins too under his bandanna as he waves back.

This doesn't seem real to him. This is like being in a play, or a movie. He can picture the plan in his head – they stride into the bank, Chad demands everyone stay put, Jensen and Jared hand the tellers the bags and demand the money, they take their ill-gotten gains and leave. Easy-peasy. Piece of cake.

But it doesn't go quite as planned.

Later, the three things Jensen will remember about his very first bank robbery are how scared the teller looks when he walks up to the counter and shoves his empty bag at the man's face, the guy in the trench coat who yells "Stop! FBI!", and the sound of a gun accidentally firing in the FBI agent's direction.

And just like that, with two words and one startled act, everything changes.

* * * * *

Jim Beaver, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in San Antonio, has seen better days. His house is only six years old and the ceiling in his daughter's room is already cracking, the sweet little old lady who takes care of her after school is pestering him to meet a nice woman and remarry "because little girls need a mother", one of Hoover's untested College Boy agents arrived from Chicago yesterday and Jim has no idea what to do with him, Miss McCoy, his new secretary, is a lovely girl but still losing papers in her attempts to adjust to her predecessor's idiosyncratic filing system, that damn Detective Downey is still hanging around (why the man is so interested in the Bureau, Jim will never know), and he dislikes J Edgar Hoover with a dislike bordering on active hate, which means doing his job is sometimes very difficult indeed.

And then Miss McCoy bursts into his office to tell him that Agent Tigerman has been shot trying to stop a bank robbery.

"Son of a bitch," he swears, jumping up fast enough to knock his chair over. "Where is he?" He's grabbing his coat and hat as he runs through the office, Miss McCoy jogging next to him trying to explain. He never takes his gunbelt off when he's at work, and for once he's grateful. He hears "Frost Bank" and "seven hundred" and "he didn't know".

"He wasn't killed," she adds. Jim doesn't care. No one shoots one of his boys and gets away with it.

"Lindberg! Collins!" he yells. "Get down to Frost Bank and make yourselves useful! I'm going to the hospital!"

* * * * *

The car is full of yelling fifteen minutes after they pull away from the bank – Chad is yelling at the FBI, Jared is yelling at Chad, Chris is yelling at Jensen, and Jensen is yelling at everyone to shut up.

He has always been proud of his ability to remain more or less calm in a crisis. This is not calm. But it's also an entirely unexpected crisis.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP," he demands, and finally everyone does. "Christ, Chad, what the hell were you thinking?"

"He wasn't," Jared says from the back seat.

"You shot someone!"

"It wasn't supposed to be loaded!" Chad protests.

"Did you _check_?" Chris asks pointedly.

"I didn't kill him!"

"How do you know?"

Chad stares at the back of Chris' head, panic-stricken.

"What do we do now?" Jared asks, clearly striving for calm. Well, someone has to. But he's looking at Jensen. And then Chad is looking at Jensen. And then Chris takes his eyes off the road long enough to also look at Jensen.

 _When did I get put in charge?_ Jensen wonders.

"Well, we can't go back to Jennifer's," he says. "And you really can't go home," he tells Chad. "We have to leave town, at least until we know what happened to that guy. If he's just hurt - " He thinks.

"We robbed a fucking bank, Jen," Chris says. "If they catch us, we're going to jail. I am _not_ going to jail."

"Just... shut up and drive." They have no contingency plans. They weren't even thinking about what they'd do after they left the bank, aside from divide the money and figure out what to spend it on first. They never thought to plan for this.

They never even considered jail, which Jensen now thinks was their first and biggest mistake.

This is what comes of making plans while drunk, he thinks. This is what you get for letting desperation inform your decisions.

Jared and Chad are looking at him expectantly. Shit.

"We have to go somewhere," Jared says. "We can't keep driving around San Antonio."

"We'll go to Dallas," Jensen decides. "Chris. You want to head north."

They stop at a gas station just south of Austin looking for a phone so they can try to find out what happened to the FBI agent. Jared seems to think Sandy is their best bet for reliable information, and Chad and Jensen stay with him while he calls her. Chris waits in the car.

Jared gets as far as "Hi" before Sandy apparently takes over the conversation. His end of it is confined to "You're kidding" and "Is he ok?" and "That's good" and "Do they know who – " and "Ok, I'll talk to you later."

"What was that?" Chad demands.

"He's ok. The FBI agent. You hit him in the shoulder but he'll be fine. You kinda winged him." Chad looks relieved. Jensen probably does too. He feels relieved, at any rate. "She said they have no idea who robbed the bank but they got away with about seven hundred dollars."

"Seven hundred," Jensen repeats, stunned. For maybe five minutes' work, and they didn't even get into the vault.

"That's what she said." A grin starts creeping across Jared's face. "We got seven hundred bucks. And you didn't kill anyone after all," he says to Chad. "I bet you were never so glad your aim sucks."

"We need to count this properly," Chris says when they go back to the car, "but it looks like about five-fifty, five-sixty in here."

"Seven hundred," Jared tells him, still grinning.

"No shit. Get in the car. We oughta go."

"And I didn't kill anyone," Chad adds proudly. "I just winged the guy."

"And they don't have any leads for who robbed the bank," Jensen says, climbing into the passenger seat. He has to shove the bags of money onto the floor. "I think we're ok."

"But we still can't go home yet," Jared says. "Sandy said the FBI's pissed that one of their agents got shot, even if they have no idea who did it. The guy walked in on us – he didn't know anyone was robbing the bank and we weren't watching the door."

"I was just surprised," Chad interrupts.

"Next time we need to put someone on the door so this doesn't happen again."

And because no one contradicts him about the possibility of doing this again, they spend the rest of the drive to Jensen's parents' house discussing plans for the next robbery that will make it less of a disaster than the first, including where they could go, how long they should wait before trying again, and (briefly) how long they plan to keep doing it. They also talk about how long they should stay in Dallas and what should they tell Jensen's parents, not to mention whether or not Chris and Chad and Jared should call their respective families tonight or wait until tomorrow and what should they say.

"Your sister's going to kill us," Jensen tells Chris. "You know that, right? It doesn't matter what lie you tell her – she'll think we're going to Dallas so you can find people to hit for money." It occurs to him that worrying about Jennifer's reaction is a little stupid, considering the circumstances.

"I was gonna tell her we're going to Houston," Chris says. "I got a friend there."

"Can I use that excuse?" Chad asks.

"Do you have friends in Houston?"

"No. I thought I could use yours." He grins. Jared smacks him on the side of the head. Jensen resists the urge to reach over the seat and do the same.

They get briefly lost driving into Dallas – Jensen has never driven this route from this direction – and then stop for food because Jared is apparently _starving_. They make it to the Ackles family home a little after dinnertime, surprising the hell out of Jensen's parents and grandparents, not the least because Jensen brought three friends with him, only one of whom anyone knows.

His mom tries to feed them and the boys spin a story about taking a road trip to get out of Jennifer's hair, and maybe going to Oklahoma or possibly Houston to look for work. Jensen is sure his mother knows he's lying but is too polite to say so in front of his friends. Jared charms Jensen's grandmother, who is suspicious of boys whose families she doesn't know, and gets Jensen's grandfather to tell the story of his distant relative who fought under William Travis and was killed at the Alamo. Even Chad is on his best behavior.

Jensen learns that his sister was shipped off to stay with their aunt and uncle in Corpus Christi right after New Year's, to get her away from a boy.

"I didn't like him," Jensen's dad says. "And your mother didn't trust him."

This means that come bedtime, Jared ends up in her room, and Chad gets the couch. Jared wants to see Jensen's room, which Jensen thinks is weird, but he doesn't have anything to hide and he really doesn't mind.

Chad keeps teasing Jared about sleeping in a girl's room until Jared tackles him to the floor, sits on him, and makes him beg for mercy. Chris thinks Jared should just suffocate Chad and leave him there. Jensen suggests they maybe not do that where his mom will have to clean up their mess.

After everyone else has gone to bed, Jensen and Chris bring the two sacks of money in from the car, dump them out on Jensen's bed, and count their theft.

"I'm sitting in my room in my childhood home counting money I stole from a bank in San Antonio," Jensen says. He jiggles a handful of silver dollars. "My parents are asleep right across the hall. This is crazy."

He and Chris count twice, and then Jensen sneaks out to wake Jared up so he can count as well. The final tally comes to $714.77.

"You can't divide that evenly by four," Jared says, yawning.

"We can try," Chris tells him, starting to sort the money into piles.

"Do that in the morning," Jensen suggests. "We don't have anything to separate it into. You can go back to bed." He pats Jared on the shoulder, and Jared heaves himself to his feet and shuffles out.

Jensen does not sleep well. He doesn't think they should stay in Dallas that long. He doesn't think they should stay in Texas at all. And he needs to think up a good reason for why he's about to give his parents a hundred and thirty bucks, when they know he hasn't been working.

First thing in the morning, Chris calls his sister to lie about where he is and to let her know he won't be home for a while.

"Did I tell you about my friend David?" he asks her. "He's in Houston. We thought.... Me and Jen. That we.... No, I'm not looking for fights." He rolls his eyes. "We thought we'd see if there was work there. It's really last minute, I know.... Yeah, we heard. That's some crazy shit. Do they have any idea who it was?" He covers the receiver with his hand and hisses "She's telling me about the robbery" at Jensen.

"What's she saying?" Jensen hisses back.

"What?" Chris says into the phone. "I'm telling Jensen you're worried about us. Yeah, we'll be fine. I'll call you in a couple days." He hangs up.

"And what are you gonna tell her when you call her in a couple days?"

Chris shrugs. "I'll figure it out. Oh, she told me the papers are calling us the Jay Gang. Someone in the bank heard Chad yell 'Jay!' so that's the name they're going with."

Chad looks pleased with himself when they tell him, but then admits he's disappointed they're not the Murray Gang.

"Buck up," Jared says. "We'll give you credit for firing the first shot."

Jensen doesn't want to hang around his parents' house all day, and the four boys need clothes and toiletries and Jared, for some insane reason, is curious to see the place Jensen and Chris came from. So they spend the day tooling around Dallas, driving by Jensen's high school and the gym where Chris learned to box and the apartment Jensen's parents were living in when he was born. They shop for clothes and Chad stops at a barber's for a haircut and Jared walks into a drugstore to buy a razor and soap and walks out with a paper sack full of Cherry Mash candy.

They divide up the Frost Bank money back at the house. Jensen waits until after dinner to corner his mom in the kitchen and give her his share, explaining that he won it playing numbers. She doesn't believe him. He's not surprised.

"Don't lie to your mother," she scolds. "I taught you better than that."

"I'm not lying," he insists. "Why would I lie about playing numbers?"

"I don't know. But there's a reason you don't want me to know where this came from." She shakes the wad of bills at him.

"As long as you take it, it doesn't matter. You need it more than I do, Mom."

His father hasn't had work in six months and spends most of his days at the Elks Lodge. His mother has to look after his grandparents, despite his grandfather's pension, and she has even less help now that Jensen's sister has been packed off to Corpus Christi.

She looks old and tired and pinched, more so than before Jensen left for San Antonio. He hates lying to her, he hates that he has to, but she and his father and even his sister are the reason he walked into Frost Bank with a bandanna over his face and a pistol in his hand.

"Don't argue with me," he says, taking the bills from his mother and stuffing them in the pocket of her apron. He kisses her on the cheek. "Let me take care of you for once, ok?"

They leave the next day. Jensen promises his parents he'll call when he finds work. He tries not to think about the fact that if everything goes according to plan, the work he'll find will be stealing.

Ten minutes outside Dallas, Chris announces "We're going to Oklahoma."

"What's in Oklahoma?" Jared asks.

"Chris - " Jensen start to say. He knows where this is going.

"Indians?" Chad guesses. "Wheat?"

"The Kane family farm."

"I thought you were from Dallas," Jared says.

"It's my great-granddaddy's homestead," Chris explains. "My uncles were working it until the bank took it." He still looks pissed about that. Jensen can't blame him.

"So you want to get back at the bank," Chad says. "We can do that."

"I want to give them the money."

"All of it??" Chad looks a little panicked.

"You can keep your share of the loot," Jared says reassuringly, patting Chad on the shoulder. Chad looks only mildly placated.

"You gave most of your quarter of the Frost money to your folks," Chris tells Jensen. "How is this different?"

He's right – it isn't.

"How do you know they're even still there?" Jensen asks. "The bank's not going to take the farm and then let the farmers stay there."

Chris doesn't have an answer for that. But he doesn't change course.

They cruise through Davis, Oklahoma, in the middle of the day, find a motor court just outside town, and plan their next move. Davis isn't very big but there's a likely-looking bank in the center of town. Chris and Jensen look for a road atlas and a place where Chris can try to call his uncles. Their first quest is successful, the second less so – they call the farm from a drugstore, but no one answers the phone.

They go out for dinner, eat chicken and mashed potatoes and pie, talk about inconsequential things, joke around. Chad makes a pass at the waitress. Jared calms her down when she tries to dump the pot of coffee she's carrying over Chad's head.

Jensen, much to his surprise, sleeps like a baby.

In the morning, while Jared is out finding breakfast, Chad empties his handgun under Chris and Jensen's watchful gaze, and then puts the bullets in his coat pocket. They use their shiny new atlas to trace a route out of town. Chris volunteers to drive again.

"Storm's coming," he says, as they head out under a cloudy sky.

"Smells like snow," Jared adds, and when Jensen gives him a curious look, he explains "Snow has a smell, you didn't know? Doesn't it snow in Dallas?" He grins, teasing. Jensen just rolls his eyes. He knows for a fact that it hardly ever snows in San Antonio either.

Either by virtue of their new and improved planning, or because the bank isn't crowded, or just due to sheer luck, this robbery goes off without a hitch. The only snag, if it can even be called that, is that Chad stops to yell "You've just been robbed by the Murray Gang!" as they dash out. Jared smacks him on the side of the head and hauls him backwards through the door. Chad is unrepentant.

They're just south of Oklahoma City when the snow starts.

"Told you," Jared says to no one in particular. He looks smug.

"Maybe we should stop," Chad suggests. "In case it gets worse."

"I can drive in the snow," Chris says, but Jensen notices his hands tightening on the steering wheel and his concentration sharpening on the road.

They swing around Oklahoma City in the growing storm and make it as far as Enid before Chris admits defeat and they stop at a motel to wait for the snow to let up.

They get stuck in Enid for three days.

By the end of day two Chris wants to strangle Chad and Jensen wants to strangle both of them and Jared has befriended the motel manager to the point she lets Chris borrow her phone five times so he can call his uncles. They never answer. He calls his sister. She tells him the uncles are in Amarillo, the farm is gone, he needs to let it go.

Jensen agrees with her. "We'll hit a couple more banks, you'll keep the money for a new farm. But they lost the old one. I'm sorry, man."

Chad "trades" their car for another one – an inconspicuous black Chevrolet with Oklahoma license plates – and they leave Enid for Tulsa, where four days later they interrupt late morning business at the Exchange National Bank and coax bills and coins out of four startled tellers.

 _This is our third robbery in two weeks_ , Jensen realizes, as he and Chad back away from the counters and towards the front door with bags of money in their hands. _It can't be this easy._

And it's not. Someone must have alerted the police, or a patrolman just happened to cruise past the bank, because as Jensen and Chad and Jared hustle out the front door and into the waiting car, the policeman starts shooting at them. Chad leans out the back window and attempts to shoot back, apparently forgetting that he took the bullets out of his gun. He swears a blue streak as Chris slams on the gas and rockets through a red light.

"What the fuck was that?" Chad demands.

"A red light?" Chris answers. "A patrolman with a gun?"

"Watch the road," Jensen snaps. "We need to ditch the car."

"We need to get out of Oklahoma."

"We can go to Missouri!" Jared says excitedly. "My dad has a cousin in Springfield!"

"Go east," Jensen tells Chris, who tells him to shut up.

In a tiny town called Vinita, Jared steals a Ford out of someone's driveway and they abandon the black Chevrolet by the side of the road. They continue on until they get to Springfield, and when Jared's father's cousin isn't home, the boys settle into a motel to count their money, calm themselves down, and figure out what to do next.

"What to do next" turns out to be "Go to St Louis". They can wait out the winter, lay low, hope any investigations into their robberies die down, and maybe see some of the city.

It's a brilliant plan. They stay in St Louis for three months. Their ill-gotten gains allow them to become men of leisure – they rent an apartment, cruise around town, go to the movies, eat out, wine and dine the occasional pretty girl, and have several serious discussions about turning to bank robbery as a profession. Who would've guessed that it was something they'd be good at? Especially since Sandy tells Jared over the phone that there have been no leads on the Jay Gang that robbed the Frost Bank back in January, and the police have just about given up.

The FBI hasn't quite stopped investigating, she adds, but there's really nothing left to investigate.

Jensen asks Jared how Sandy knows so much about the FBI, and Jared just shrugs and says she's always known the good gossip.

"Maybe we can go home now," Jared says. But he's voted down.

The boys start writing home, rather than calling all the time, and tell their folks that Houston was a bust so they went to St Louis. ("My dad looks at postmarks," Jared explains. "He likes to try and time the mail.") Old habits die hard and Jensen finds himself looking at want ads and checking for help wanted signs around the city. He and Jared both get library cards – Jared, it turns out, is a voracious reader. Chad buys true crime magazines to read for professional tips. Chris picks up a guitar at a music store and teaches himself how to play. The four of them pool their money for a car and Chad and Jared buy a used 1929 Model A Ford, which they both spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time tinkering with. Jensen learns what a disassembled Ford engine looks like. Chris learns how hard it is to get motor oil out of one's hair.

Late one night Jared takes the car they stole in Vinita, drives an hour south, abandons it, and calls the Vinita police station to leave an anonymous tip. Later he tells Jensen he felt bad that they stole someone's car out of the person's driveway, and he wanted them to get their car back.

And then one afternoon in May, Chris walks out of a soda fountain to find a cop writing down the license plate of their (legally parked, officially stickered) new-used Ford, and the boys decide maybe they should think about moving on.

  
_Summer 1933  
Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas_   


  


_One quick job before we disappear_ , Chris said. _We're leaving the state anyway_ , he said. _You can drive_ , he said.

 _This will go badly_ , is what he should have said. And _We'll be chased into Indiana_. And _We might be wanted in Missouri now_.

The best Jensen can say about this particular enterprise is that at least they had the foresight to hit a bank in a city besides St Louis, where people might have recognized them.

"It's not my fault this time!" Chad insists, as they speed over the state line into Illinois, escaping the Cape Girardeau police just in time to catch a couple of Illinois cops on motorcycles. "The teller refused me! This is why I need a loaded gun!"

"You would've shot him," Jared says. "Then it'd be San Antonio all over again."

"Well it doesn't matter now," Jensen grits through his teeth. Having motorcycle cops on his ass makes him incredibly nervous – they can flank him and he has no idea how fast this car can go. "We still have company. Why am I driving? I'm not the speed demon."

"We can't stop. Pull off up there." Jared points to a road running off the highway a little ahead of them. He jumped in the front seat next to Jensen when they came tearing out of the bank, and just having him there makes Jensen feel a little calmer. Still nervous about outrunning cops in a state he doesn't know, but the next best thing to sitting next to Chris.

A couple more hours of driving at top speed over an assortment of paved highways, country roads, and dirt tracks takes its toll on an already overextended engine, and Jensen has to pull over when smoke starts leaking out from under the hood. At least the engine waits until he's off the road to cough, belch, and quit entirely.

"Well, shit," he says.

"Ok, that might be my fault," Chad admits. "We never tested the engine like that."

"It did pretty well," Jared says, opening his door and climbing out of the car. "We couldn't use it to advertise our own garage, but we coaxed a little more juice out of it." He tries to wave the smoke away as he walks around the front of the Ford and over to the driver's side. Jensen rolls down the window.

"So what now, Mr Grease Monkey?" he asks. Jared shrugs.

"I guess we walk."

"Walk where?" Chad demands, at the same time Chris says "Oh hell no." He gets out of the car, followed shortly by Chad.

"What do you think we did to it?" Jared asks Chad. "Could we do it again and make it better?"

"I thought we were making it faster." Chad walks around the car and tentatively pats the hood.

"It was faster," Jensen says, "until it died on us." He's going to believe Jared's assessment that all of his and Chad's tinkering actually boosted the Ford's speed.

"Can we maybe discuss doing something besides standing around here with our dicks in our hands?" Chris interrupts. Jensen takes that as his cue to get out of the car.

They debate their options, which boil down to two, really – wait for someone to drive by and offer them a ride, or start walking. At least the car chose to give up the ghost on a decent-sized road, so they're not stranded on some old wagon track in the middle of nowhere and there's a chance someone will appear before dark to rescue them.

There is the matter of the two sacks full of other people's money, not to mention the several firearms in the front and back seats of the car. All their luggage is tied to the back, as well as Chris' guitar and a camera that Jared bought Jensen for his birthday, which is full of pictures of the four of them goofing off and (in Chad's case) sitting on the floor surrounded by stolen cash. They're at least a state removed from the bank in Cape Girardeau, and as far as they know no one's looking for them here, but still, they don't want to take any chances, and whatever they decide, they have to be careful.

After about fifteen minutes, while the four of them are still discussing their options and trying to figure out where they are, a red four-door Chevrolet pulls up alongside them and a man in a straw boater leans out of the driver's-side window to ask if they need some help.

"You have a spare engine?" Jared asks.

"No, just the one we're using," the man says.

"Can we borrow it?" Chad asks. He sounds like he's kidding, but as the driver of the Chevrolet laughs and starts to answer, Chad reaches into the back seat of the old Ford, grabs a shotgun, and aims it at the man in the boater. "I'm serious. Get out of the car."

"Oh, Jesus," Chris mutters.

"We can't take their car!" Jared protests.

"Why not?" Chad says. "You stole one out of someone's driveway."

"I tried to return it."

"Chad – " Jensen starts to say. This is a stupid conversation, for one thing, and the longer they stand around arguing, the greater their chances of getting into trouble.

More trouble, anyway.

"Get our stuff," Chad says. The driver of the car has hustled himself out and is now standing in the road looking a little nervous but mostly confused. "You too," Chad tells the other person in the car, using the shotgun for emphasis. "We needed a car. I got us a car." He peers over the top of the Chevrolet. The car's passenger turns out to be a blonde woman in a melon-colored dress. She also looks a little confused but not particularly nervous.

"Paget's going to think this is really funny," she comments. "That we had our car stolen on the way home."

"She'll tell us we should have stayed another day," the man in the hat says.

"Stuff," Chad repeats pointedly. He jerks his head at the Ford. "Guys, come on. See, we're not just standing around with our dicks in the air," he tells Chris. Chris rolls his eyes.

Chris, Jared, and Jensen unload the Ford, load up the Chevrolet, and climb in. At Jared's insistence that they can't just leave the car's actual owners stranded on the side of the road, Chad directs them to sit in the back seat between Chris and Jensen.

"You drive," he tells Jared, who grins excitedly. In any other circumstance, Jensen might find that cute.

"This is an adventure," the woman says. She beams at Chris. "Hello, cutie."

Jensen isn't sure, but he thinks he might be blushing on Chris' behalf. Chris just looks amused.

Jared hasn't driven two minutes when he apparently realizes that he has no idea where they are or where they're going, because he turns his head to look at the back seat just long enough to ask "Do you know where we are?"

"About twenty minutes north of Evansville," the man says.

"Indiana?"

"It was when we left."

"What's wrong with Indiana?" the woman asks, as if she can't believe anyone could dislike her state.

"Nothing," Jared says. "I thought we were in Illinois."

"I thought we were in Kentucky." Chris mutters. "I got a friend – "

"Where are we going?"

"You're driving, you tell us."

"We were going to Indianapolis," the woman offers. "If you wanted to take us home."

"Shouldn't be more than, what, four hours?" the man says. "Maybe five."

Jensen can't tell if they're joking or not.

"Do total strangers often steal your car at gunpoint?" he asks, curious as to why neither of them seems concerned that they've been kidnapped by four strange men.

"I think this is our first time," the man tells him.

"You're not worried we'll hurt you?"

"This one," the woman answers, leaning forward to tap Jared on the back of the head, "didn't want to abandon us. Should we be worried?"

"No," Chris says pointedly, in a tone that Jensen knows is meant for Chad. Chad's still holding the shotgun, although the chances of him being able to use it from the front seat are very slim.

Jared drives and they learn that their kidnappees are called Kirsten and Matthew, and Kirsten is really amused at the thought that they might be married.

"Oh, honey, no," she laughs, when Chad asks.

"Engaged?"

Another laugh.

"A couple at all?"

"Just friends." She grins, pats Matthew on the knee. "Matthew's not my type."

"But don't we look good together?" Matthew asks. He and Kirsten tilt their heads together and make what Jensen can only assume are sultry faces. And then they both pucker their lips like goldfish, spoiling the effect.

"What do you do for a living?" Chris asks them.

"Photographer, artist, and magician," Matthew tells him. "Budding director of stage and... stage. Kirsten builds buildings."

"You're in construction?" Chris looks doubtful.

"Architecture," she says. "I let the boys do the heavy lifting." She digs through her purse to find a little silver card holder. She pops it open and hands Chris one of her cards.

"Huh," he says. "There construction work in Indianapolis?"

"It's not as good as the money we're making now," Chad tells him.

"Oh?" Matthew asks. "What do you do?"

"We rob banks," Chad says proudly. "Ow! Hey!" Jensen and Jared have apparently had the same thought at the same time, because Jared reaches sideways and Jensen reaches forward and they both smack Chad in the head.

Matthew and Kirsten exchange a look that Jensen can't even begin to interpret.

"We can take them," she says cheerfully.

And then Jensen changes the subject.

Jared drives aimlessly for a couple of hours, heading generally north but occasionally going in circles. He clearly has no idea where they are or where they're going, but he listens the three times Kirsten gently tries to direct him. She tells the story of how Matthew dislocated his knee ("We went to a supper club – " "There was no one on the dance floor!" " – and he got so excited he fell and dislocated his knee."), Chad tells the story of how he was disproportionately punished for threatening a man with an unloaded rifle ("It was a pistol," Jared interrupts), Chris embarrasses Jensen with the story of how long it took for Jensen to finally ask out his (now ex-)girlfriend, because it took him that long to realize she was interested in him (this has everyone in the car laughing, because she was not at all subtle), and Matthew does a magic trick using a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper retrieved from Kirsten's purse that causes Chad to demand he do it again. Four times.

"A magician never reveals his secrets," Matthew says loftily.

"I'll tell you how we robbed the – OW. Jesus, Jay!"

"I think we're gonna have to let you fine folks go," Jensen says. It really is high time they were on their way.

"Before I kill me an idiot with a big mouth," Chris mutters.

"I'm not sure where we are," Jared says over his shoulder. It's almost dark now and he's very intent on the road, although the Chevrolet's headlights are very bright and visibility is good.

"You're still in Indiana," Kirsten tells him.

"How can you tell?"

"I've lived here my whole life. A local knows these things."

"We passed a sign for Bloomington about fifteen minutes ago," Matthew says. "I can reveal _your_ secrets." He grins at Kirsten.

Just as Jared didn't want to leave Matthew and Kirsten by the side of the road after Chad hijacked their car, neither does he want to leave them in the middle of nowhere. He turns around, follows the sign to Bloomington, and drops their passengers off on what looks like a major road into town.

"You can probably get a bus home," he tells them. "If anyone asks, tell them we didn't hurt you."

"You can sell out Chad," Chris suggests.

"No one will believe this happened to us anyway," Kirsten says, laughing.

"They'll believe it happened to me," Matthew says.

"Your life does attract a lot of strange...."

When Jared drives off, the two of them have linked arms and are walking towards town.

"We have to ditch the car," Chad says after a few minutes. He sounds disappointed.

"We have to find a place to stay," Jensen adds. "Now we know where we are – "

"We have a road atlas!" Jared announces. "No one remembered!" He waves his hand in Chad's direction. "Find us on the map and get me to a highway."

Outside Terre Haute they pull around the back of a motel and Chad breaks into a new-looking Ford sedan. They switch cars as quickly as possible – Jensen thinks this is a bad idea, too exposed, and says so – and leave Kirsten's business card on the front seat of the red Chevrolet, a circle drawn around her phone number and "Call me for pickup" scribbled on the card.

Chad insists on driving this time and they head north on Highway 41 until they see signs for Chicago. Because Chad is driving, and he wants to see Chicago, they go to Chicago. They even manage to find a nice hotel without getting too lost. Jensen signs the register as Ben Alexander from Houston and gets two rooms with a connecting door.

(He later finds out that as he's getting the rooms, the other three are arguing about what to do with their guns. Chad wants to bring them into the hotel. Chris and Jared talk him out of it.)

"Think it's safe to stay here a couple days?" Jensen asks, flopping onto his back on one of the beds in his and Chris' room. He closes his eyes and just enjoys the softness of the mattress for a minute. "I've never been to Chicago. Don't start thinking about knocking over a bank in the middle of the city." He lifts his hand and points accusingly in what he assumes is Chris' direction.

"I was doing nothing of the kind," Chris tells him, sounding affronted.

"Uh-huh." Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. "I'm starving. Let's find some food." He hauls himself off the bed and opens the connecting door to Jared and Chad's room.

"I should have a nickname," Chad is saying, "like Machine Gun Kelly or Baby Face Nelson or Pretty Boy Floyd."

Jared snickers. "So who would you be," he asks, "Half-Wit Murray?" Chad punches Jared on the arm and looks offended.

" _Mayhem_. Mayhem Murray."

"They didn't give themselves those names," Chris points out. "The papers did."

"So?"

"You do cause mayhem," Jared muses.

"Either of you hungry?" Jensen asks, changing the subject. His stomach rumbles. Jared laughs.

"You need a steak. Onward!"

A decent steakhouse is not hard to find, and some judicious asking around – and Jared laying on the drawl a little thick – gets them to a speakeasy, which seems like more of an open secret than an actual secret. Chris is pretty sure that two of the men drinking at the bar are cops and the man in the stiff-looking black suit is a federal agent.

"How can you tell?" Chad asks.

"He looks like he's got a pole up his ass. Only government suits are that uptight."

A pretty girl with flaming red hair buys Chris a drink and then leans over his shoulder to chat with him, and he almost gets into a fight with the burly guy who appears three minutes later and lays claim to her.

"You don't want to go to jail," Jensen hisses in his ear. "And I don't want to bail you out."

Chris shrugs him off and holds up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I wasn't hitting on her," he tells the big guy. "She came up to me."

"I think you better leave," the guy says, puffing out his chest.

"I kind of – " Chad starts to say, but Jared's elbow in his side cuts him off.

"We don't want any trouble," Jared says. "We'll go." He hustles a protesting Chad out of the bar. Jensen resists the urge to grab Chris' sleeve as he follows.

"That was unsatisfying," Chad huffs, once they're out on the sidewalk.

"I'll show you satisfying," Chris says. He starts shrugging out of his coat.

"No more drinks for you, Mr Kane," Jensen says firmly, and this time he does grab Chris' arm and starts pulling him down the street towards the hotel. He knows that look on Chris' face, and he doesn't think Chad really wants to be on the receiving end of Chris' fist.

"What do y'all think?" Jared asks as they walk. "I want to stay in Chicago a few days. We'll be fine – no one's going to look for us here."

"It's a gangster town," Chad adds cheerfully, "and we're gangsters."

Part of Jensen would like to disagree – they're not gangsters, they're decent Texans – but since January they've robbed four banks, stolen a number of cars, and kidnapped a couple for several hours. Decent people don't do things like that.

But he can still be a decent person even if he's doing indecent things. He reminds himself that he's stealing from banks that took good people's homes and farms, and he's doing it for his parents and his grandparents and Chris' uncles, and when he doesn't need to any more, when he can make an honest living instead of resorting to criminal activity, he'll stop.

It's like any other job – you do it until you don't have to, or until you find something you want to do more, And they talked about this back in St Louis, didn't they, treating bank robbery like a job. So that's what he'll do. He'll be professional and efficient and careful and he'll make enough money so that someday his parents will stop worrying and he'll be able to take care of himself.

He tells Chris all this later that night, back in their room at the hotel, and Chris tells him to shut up and go to sleep.

Four days later they're in Aurora, two or so hours west of Chicago, and Jensen realizes that, barring some catastrophe, he's not going to stop, and neither are Chris and Chad and Jared. Not when six minutes' work in Benchmark Bank nets them almost nine thousand dollars, and they escape unmolested across Illinois in their stolen Terre Haute Ford.

The next several months pass almost lazily, the boys crossing first Iowa and then Kansas and back through Missouri to Illinois and into Arkansas, stopping a few days here, a week or two there, swapping cars or just license plates when necessary, trying very hard to stay off the law enforcement radar, writing home and occasionally mailing well-disguised stacks of bills. Jensen tries not to worry too much about what his mother must be thinking, how she must be wondering what he's doing to make money.

He tries to think instead about how they've all adopted personas – cheerful, friendly, "we can take this place in four minutes" gangsters. They wear bandannas over their faces like train robbers. They swap positions – who guards the door, who has to drive, who coaxes the bank manager to open the vault. Chad talks them into actually loading their guns, although so far they haven't had to use them. Just carrying them is enough.

Jensen is pretty sure that eventually it won't be enough, but they'll jump off that bridge when they come to it.

And in the meantime, they're almost like four friends on an extended road trip. They drive until late, sleep in fields in nice weather, stop at little roadside cafés and motor courts, send postcards home. They let Jared talk them into driving through the night to see the circus outside Hamilton, Missouri. They argue about where to go next, how long to stay, who's going to drive, who's going to read the map, should they stop and eat now or keep going, Jared do you realize you had lunch just an hour and a half ago?

Chad drives off the road and gets the car stuck in the mud in Middle-of-nowhere, Iowa, and the other three pile out to push. It's a beautiful day despite the mud, and Jensen thinks they probably look like any carefree group of young men pushing their car out of a hole – him in his undershirt and Jared with his sleeves rolled up, both of them braced against the back of the car while Chris leans into the open rear passenger-side door, both his hands pushing against the frame.

"Floor it!" Chris commands, and Chad does. The boys heave. The back wheels spin uselessly, throwing up clots of mud on their pants and shoes. Chris yells at Chad to stop.

"Hey, Chad," Jared calls, shaking out his arms, "put it in reverse. Try rocking it back and forth."

Chad tries that, rocking the car forward and backwards a few times while the other three push, until the car jerks free of the mud and rolls onto drier ground. Jensen's foot skids as the car pulls away and he almost falls on his face. Jared grabs at him and manages to keep him upright.

"Thanks," Jensen says. "Ah, shit." He slaps ineffectually at his muddy clothes. Jared laughs at him.

"Should've taken them off," he says, grinning. He slaps Jensen on the back, then grabs his arm. "Come on, he's gonna leave us." Chad has already started back towards the road, evidently eager to put as much space between the car and the mud as possible. Chris is hanging out the back door, waving at Jared and Jensen to hurry up. They take off after the car, both of them laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

In July, they plan three days in Kansas City which turn into six weeks because Chad meets a girl named Julie and refuses to leave. Jared reminds him about Kenzie, the girl he was chasing back in San Antonio. Chad says she probably met someone else by now. Chris observes that it would be in her best interests to do so. Chad does not rise to the bait, demonstrating how far gone he is on this skinny redhaired girl.

The other three don't really object to hanging around. Downtime is always nice to have, and the boys kind of like being able to wash in a real bathroom and sleep in a bed more than two nights in a row. Jensen and Chris drag Jared to a few Kansas City Blues games, and even though it's a minor-league team, they've never actually seen major-league baseball, and the Blues more than scratch their baseball itch. Jared laughs at them when they start yelling at the players and the umpire, protesting bad plays and encouraging better ones.

What gets them to leave are two important things. First, they discover there was a shootout at the train station in June, during which a few FBI agents and police detectives were killed along with a bank robber none of the boys have ever heard of, and as a result, law enforcement is looking closely at the the city.

Second, Chad, in his increasingly desperate attempts to win Julie over, confesses the gang's bank-robbing exploits. She sends her brother after him. (It turns out that her brother has a standing poker game with a couple of local cops.) Chris and Jared both have to be restrained from killing Chad dead. Jensen reminds them that robbing banks is one thing, but murder is something else entirely. Besides, blood is a bitch to clean off car seats.

They cross the river into Kansas and make a stop in Lawrence – specifically the Sunflower Bank, with its compliant tellers and recalcitrant vault – and turn south, aiming for the northeast corner of Oklahoma and then Arkansas.

* * * * *

After the Kansas City Massacre in June, during which four good men and one lousy criminal were killed, the order comes down from Washington that all FBI agents are now allowed to carry guns. This means nothing to Jim personally, as he's always been allowed to wear his guns, but it means the world to his office. He wants his boys to be able to shoot back.

Tigerman's shoulder has healed but he can't hit the broad side of a barn, and Jim knows this as fact and not hyperbole because they've been out to his cousin's ranch for target practice. Collins turns out to be a good shot, although he and Detective Downey spend enough time goofing around that Jim is sure one of them is going to shoot his foot off one day. (Downey is so determined to join the FBI that Jim has had to talk to the chief of police about the detective working with his agents instead of with the San Antonio police. And even though Jim thinks Downey is crazy and probably a drug addict, he has to admit that the man can be almost professional when called upon, and is actually a pretty decent detective.) Lindberg's aim is good but not great, and after he accidentally shoots the windshield out of one of the squad cars, Jim takes his gun away.

He's written letters and memos and made phone calls to SACs and Rangers and sheriffs and detectives and FBI agents he knows or has contact with in dozens of cities, warning them about the four men he has followed the newspapers in calling the Jay Gang, but Jim has no leads on these men who robbed his bank and shot his agent, and after six months he's starting to think he'll have to give up. It galls him and hurts his pride, but with Hoover breathing down his and every other SAC's neck about finding the men responsible for the Massacre, he doesn't really have the time to spare. Hoover wants the big names. Nelson. Kelly. The Barkers. Karpis. He won't give Jim the time or the manpower needed to chase down four apparent ghosts. The Dallas SAC, Jim's closest ally as the crow flies, is too busy looking for a couple of local criminals called Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. If Jim wants to find the Jay Gang, he's on his own.

* * * * *

"Chad? What are you doing?"

"Writing a letter to Mr Henry Ford."

They're stopped for a rest outside a little Arkansas town called Batesville, to eat the lunch they picked up at a roadside café and so Chris can check out the car, which has been making funny noises for about an hour. Chad and Jared both think it's fine. Chris still wants to look.

Jensen is trying to take a nap, flat on his back in the grass next to Jared with his eyes closed, and now Jared is apparently talking to Chad about... Henry Ford? Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. This he has to see.

Jared is leaning over Chad's shoulder. "'Dear Mr Ford,'" he reads, "'I've driven a lot of cars' – you mean you've stolen a lot of cars."

"I still drove them," Chad says.

The car Chris is checking over is in fact yet another stolen Ford, this one taken from a dark parking lot in Fayetteville.

"'I've driven a lot of cars,'" Jared continues, "'and your flathead V-8 has them all beat. It is the fastest and most reliable engine I've ever had the pleasure of driving. I would recommend your cars to anyone.' You spelled ‘recommend' wrong. It's only got one c."

"Shit." Chad crosses the word out and scribbles over it. By now Jensen is leaning over Jared, curious to see what Chad's writing. He's a little surprised that Chad has what looks like a new pad of writing paper, as they tend to either use up their stationery writing home, or lose it in transit. "I should probably rewrite it." Chad elbows Jared out of the way – which means Jared accidentally elbows Jensen – and adds "Thank you for producing such a wonderful automobile. Sincerely, Chad Michael ‘Mayhem' Murray" to the end of the letter. "What do you think?" he asks.

"We'll have to remember to stop at a post office," Jensen says, and Jared asks "You're really gonna sign it ‘Mayhem'?"

"Yeah. Why not? It's my name."

Jared rolls his eyes. Chad rips his letter off the pad of paper and starts over, writing slowly so as to make his handwriting as legible as possible. When he's done, he folds the letter in thirds and, to Jensen's further surprise, pulls an envelope out from underneath the pad of paper.

"Where do they make ‘em?" Chad asks.

"What, Fords?" Jared says. "Detroit."

Chad stuffs the letter in the envelope and writes "Mr Henry Ford, Ford Motor Co., Detroit, Michigan" on the front in careful block print. Jared leans over him and helpfully points out that he spelled everything correctly. Chad just elbows him in the stomach again. Jared grabs Chad's shoulders, pushes him down on the ground, and sits on him.

"Get off me, you sasquatch," Chad protests.

"Say 'uncle,'" Jared says serenely.

"You're wrinkling my letter!"

"'Uncle.'"

"Get off!" Chad wriggles and shoves and maybe Jared feels bad for him, because Chad manages to get loose enough to push Jared off and sit on him instead. Jensen, amused, watches them wrestle until Chris yells "Chad! Stop beating up your boyfriend and come look at this!"

Chad pushes Jared off him for the final time, stands up, brushes himself off, and exaggeratedly collects his dignity before walking over to where Chris is gesturing at something under the Ford's hood.

"You know he used to be married?" Jared asks.

"Who?" Jensen says.

Jared inclines his head towards the car, where Chad and Chris are now both peering under the car hood and probably messing with the engine.

"Why?" Jensen asks.

Jared shrugs. "He said he was in love. Her name was Sophia and she was really pretty. She was nice, I liked her. Her dad hated him, though. It only lasted five months."

"Smart girl."

"Nah, they both were too young and stupid to be married."

Jensen wishes that Jared would defend Chad more often in Chris' hearing, because now it looks like Chris and Chad are arguing about something. He can hear their voices rising.

Time to go.

It takes another couple of days before they remember to stop at a post office to mail Henry Ford's letter, and by then Jared has acquired and filled out a postcard for his mom. Chad drops the other three off, and while Chris goes in search of a cold Coca-Cola, Jared tries to befriend a little blonde girl in order to get her to mail their mail.

"Take it in yourself," Jensen mutters. "Or give it to me and I will."

"What if our pictures are on the wall?" Jared hisses. Jensen raises an eyebrow at him.

"That's crazy, Jared. When did the police take your picture? How do they know what we've been doing?"

"Just in case."

Jensen hopes this is just Jared messing around and pretending to be a big-name bank robber, and not paranoia. He can play the part, but he's not prepared to be a genuinely wanted man.

"What's your name?" Jared is asking the little blonde girl. She stares at him. He puts on his most trustworthy face. "I'm Jared."

"Beth," she says. She looks doubtful already.

"Hi Beth. Can you do something for me? If I give you these letters, can you take them to the post office and mail them? I have money." He digs into his pocket and comes up with a handful of coins, which he offers her. She looks unconvinced. "One's for my mom." He holds out the postcard, message side up, so she can read his note. _Mom – I'm doing well. Don't worry about me. Arkansas is hilly and green, you'd like it. J._ "I'd go myself, but I was just in there yesterday to mail a package and the clerk kept giving me the stink-eye." He drops his voice conspiratorially. "I don't think she likes me."

"Ok." Beth takes the money, the postcard, and Chad's letter. "'Mister Henry Ford,'" she reads slowly, then looks up at Jared with her eyebrow cocked in an expression so similar to Chris' sarcastic "You can't be serious" face that both he and Jensen laugh.

"She looks like Chris," Jensen comments. "He makes that face when he thinks someone's doing something stupid," he explains to Beth. "And then he smacks them upside the head."

"I think he'd like you," Jared adds. "Thank you for helping me avoid that bat in the post office." He stands up. Jensen follows. "You have a good day, Beth." He grins at her and she grins back, quick and bright. She waves at them as they walk away.

The ease with which they've been able to knock over banks and get away clean makes them cocky, and they decide to go back to Chicago despite its proximity to Aurora and the scene of one of their robberies not three months ago. They take their time driving through Illinois, even stopping in Springfield to visit Jared's father's cousin. They've gotten good about lying about their exploits, but when the cousin asks what the four of them are doing and Jared says "Driving around, seeing the country, looking for work", Jensen tells himself it's even mostly the truth.

And it is, for a certain definition of "looking for work".

Halfway between Springfield and Chicago they stop for the night in a field. Chris is driving and it's what he wants to do. The weather is warm but not humid, and it's a good night to sleep outside. They spread themselves out on the grass near the car, shoes and socks off, jackets bunched under their heads.

"You know what I want to do?" Jensen asks. When no one says anything, he goes on. "Learn to golf."

"Golf?" Chris snorts. "Golf's a rich man's game."

"You know how much money we've got sitting in the car from the last couple jobs?"

"Enough so you can join a country club?"

"Just about."

In truth, Jensen has no idea what it would cost to get him into a country club, onto a golf course, and equipped to play, but he's sure he's got enough. They've gotten pretty succesful knocking over banks, and it's kind of fun thinking about what he'll do with his share of their ill-gotten gains, after he's sent enough home to take care of his folks.

Every so often he has to remind himself why he's doing this. They've been lucky so far but he can't let himself forget his parents' reduced circumstances or his own lack of prospects.

"Golf," Chad snickers.

"I think you'd look cute in the pants," Jared says. Jensen props himself up on his elbows to try and get a look at Jared's face, see if he's joking or not, but it's too dark. He flops back down on the ground, blushing.

* * * * *

In September, Jim gets a break, although it's not quite the break he was looking for. He's in his office trying to sort through the mountain of files on his desk when he hears someone yelling his name – "Beaver!" – and he groans. It sounds like Collins, who must have picked that up from Downey. Even Lindberg is starting to do it. Jim will break them all of the habit if it damn well kills them.

"The name's Jim!" he yells back. "What?"

"We got a Kelly sighting!" Now Collins pokes his head into Jim's office. He looks excited.

"A what?"

"Kelly! Machine Gun Kelly! Barnes, what's his first name."

"George." Jim gets to his feet, checks his guns. "Ok, calm down, take me there."

Hoover wants Machine Gun Kelly, and because Hoover wants him, Jim wants him. He doubts this sighting is the real thing, but finding gangsters is his job, and as much as he hates Hoover and as frustrated as he is with the half-assed way the FBI seems to be doing things, he still has to do it. Besides, if he catches the man, maybe he can use it for leverage to get some more agents to help him work the cases piling up on his desk.

His tireless efforts to find the Jay Gang, and his stubborn refusal to quit looking, are starting to pay off – last month he got a call from the chief of police in Lawrence, Kansas, regarding a local bank robbery perpetrated by three men in bandannas. Two were average height and one was taller, and they sounded like Jim's elusive ghosts. He might be obsessed, but his obsession is getting results, if slowly, and if he can lay hands on George Barnes, perhaps he can lay hands on the Jay Gang as well.

  
_Winter 1933-34  
Texas, Kentucky_   


By December the boys are back in Texas, in Abilene, which feels a little too close for comfort to Jensen. They're far enough from both San Antonio and Dallas that it's unlikely anyone would recognize them, but a remote chance is still a chance.

And he won't admit it to anyone, but he's getting tired of this life. He wants to call his parents, he's afraid to call his parents, he wants to talk to Chris' sister, he's afraid to call her too, he's tired of driving hither and thither and trying to stay one step ahead of the law. Over the past six months they've lost or had to leave behind the guitar Chris bought in St Louis, a roll of film – shot but undeveloped – from Jensen's camera, three suitcases' worth of clothes, a loaded handgun, some books, a bunch of the detective magazines Chad keeps buying, the road atlas, countless odds and ends. They've stolen a number of cars and switched a lot of license plates. They don't think they've been in the newspapers but they don't stick around after a job, so there's no way to know what the paper in Decatur, Illinois, said about them after they walked into a bank, demanded money and the vault, and ran.

Jensen's not ready to stop altogether – the siren call of the unguarded bank is very strong – but perhaps they need a vacation.

There are still bright lights. They hang around Abilene five days, scoping out jobs, driving into the scrubland around the city, planning their next move. Jared befriends a middle-aged lady with a Scottie dog named Rodney, who she likes to dress in little plaid coats. Jensen thinks making your dog wear a coat robs him of what little dignity he might have, and Rodney does look disgruntled at all the plaid. Jared, of course, thinks the dog is adorable, and the dog seems to return the sentiment. Jensen has never learned how to read a canine face, but the barking and the tail-wagging and especially the licking seem to indicate a great deal of affection on Rodney's part.

And to be fair, Jensen can understand. Jared is the kind of person people generally like, and after a year of knowing him, Jensen has grown pretty fond.

They celebrate the repeal of the Volstead Act and the official end of Prohibition like any other bunch of good Texas boys – by finding somewhere to get acceptably and legally tanked.

"Tom's already got a case of Pearl open and ready," Chad tells Jared, as the four of them hoist glasses of genuine brewery-produced beer in a crowded bar. It's beer that was clearly produced in a hurry, but it's still better than the swill they've been drinking for years. "Alamo Foods never stopped brewing, you know." Jared nods in agreement, draining his glass and wiping foam off his lip.

"My grandma's going crazy," Jensen says. "She supported Prohibition with everything she had. Which is hypocritical, considering she likes an occasional glass as much as anyone else."

"Even my brother-in-law thought it was a stupid move," Chris says, "and he doesn't drink."

But they're not in Abilene just to drink and discuss government policy. The Farmers and Merchants National Bank doesn't look very secure, but appearances are deceiving and this is Texas, where law-abiding average citizens carry firearms to run such innocent errands as withdrawing money.

Rather than risk a shoot-out with the man in the suit who is apparently wearing a pair of six-shooters under his jacket, Jensen grabs a hostage – she's pretty and blonde and weighs next to nothing when he grabs her around the waist with one arm and picks her up. But she starts kicking, making him wish he'd just pushed her in front of him.

"It's ok, it's ok, stop kicking," he tells her. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"What about him?" she demands, gesturing at the man in the suit, who is now insisting Jensen let the girl go.

"Too much risk." They're out the door by now. Chad is pointing his shotgun out the passenger-side window of the car. He looks surprised at Jensen's hostage. "Fifteen minutes, we'll let you go, I promise. What's your name?"

She's in the car, sandwiched between Jared and the door, before she answers him. "Alona," she says. "My name's Alona."

"Mayhem," Chad introduces himself, turning in his seat to offer his hand. She looks at it – and him – dubiously.

"Is that your name or your profession?"

"Both."

Fifteen minutes later, as promised, they drop her off in front of an apartment building and make tracks out of Abilene.

The boys don't realize it at the time, because how could they, but having to hold Alona hostage to insure Jensen's free passage out of this particular bank is where their luck begins to change.

Jared breaks into an old Plymouth sitting among a half-dozen other old cars in front of a barn a few miles outside town, and the boys are surprised, to say the least, when a woman comes tearing out of the building waving a shotgun and shouting. Jared stomps on the gas pedal and takes off down the road.

"She's following us!" Chad yells, twisted around in the back seat to watch the road behind them.

"It looked abandoned!" Jared yells back. He sounds a little panicked. Not counting Matthew and Kirsten, their Indiana hostages who were there when it happened, the boys have never had anyone catch them in the process of stealing a car, much less give chase.

They seem to have lost their pursuer – she couldn't gain on them – when a rabbit runs across the road and Jared, startled, hauls on the steering wheel, yanking the Plymouth sharply to the left and driving it straight across the road, off the road, and onto the dirt, where it crashes into a fence, breaks through the barbed wire, and keeps going. The car bounces and rolls to a stop at the edge of a clump of cactus, trailing barbed wire and a piece of fencepost, leaking smoke from under the hood.

"What the hell!" Chad demands from the back seat. Jensen and Jared both turn to make sure he and Chris are ok. They glare at Jared as they untangle themselves. "This is why I should be driving!"

"A rabbit ran onto the road," Jared explains sheepishly. "You would've hit it." And he was going too fast to stop, so fast they're probably lucky the car didn't flip over from the sudden change in direction.

"Someone's coming," Jensen says, as an old pickup appears down the road, heading towards them and thus into Abilene. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Chad reach for something in the back seat.

"Don't make me beat your ass," Chris warns.

"Everybody stay calm." Jensen realizes the idiocy of saying that, what with the fact that three of them are armed and in addition to what's left of the money they've taken from previous jobs, they've now got thousands of dollars of stolen Abilene cash. "Get out and look at the engine," he tells Jared. "You can yell across the road at the pickup if it stops so the driver doesn't have to get out and see all of us."

Jared does as asked, and indeed, when the pickup pulls over to the side of the road and the driver has to get out of his truck to call over and see if the boys are ok and need help, Jared can call back that no, they'll be fine, it looks worse than it really is. The driver of the pickup asks if they need a ride into town and Jared, apparently tired of yelling, picks his way across the dirt to talk to the man at closer proximity.

Jensen watches Jared, pretty sure that Chris is watching Chad.

Jared only talks to the pickup driver a couple of minutes, and when he comes back he leans into Jensen's open window and says "I told him we didn't need any help but I'm guessing he's going to send someone out to get us anyway. We gotta go."

"Go where?" Chris asks, waving out his window to indicate the flat land and the cactus and the scrubby trees not too far away. There isn't a lot out there, and while they could find cover from the road, there aren't many places to hide for long.

"Kansas is only a couple hours that way," Chad suggests, helpfully pointing north. He still hasn't gotten over Julie from Kansas City.

"We're not going to Kansas," Jensen says.

"Why not?"

"We're probably _wanted_ in Kansas."

"You want to go to Missouri, anyway," Chris says.

"It's _Kansas_ City," Chad insists.

"Which is in Missouri."

"You didn't know that?" Jared asks. Chad looks momentarily confused, because apparently he didn't. "We were there how long and you never figured it out?" Jared grins, and now Chad looks annoyed.

"Talk later, get out of the car now," Jensen tells Chris and Chad. "We have to move before someone finds us." He grabs the pistol he took into the bank and climbs out of the Plymouth. Chris and Chad follow, carrying guns and the money and, in Chad's case, trying to wrestle a suitcase out of the back.

"Leave it," Chris tells him.

"But...!" Chad protests.

"You're not gonna drag it all over half of creation."

"I got some nice clothes!"

"Chad," Jared says, pitching his voice low and grabbing Chad's arm. "It's just clothes. You wanna go to jail? If someone finds us out here, you will."

Jared takes a rifle from the car and now that all of them are armed, they leave the wrecked Plymouth and clamber around the cactus, trying to get away from anyone who might drive down the road and see them.

God must be smiling down on them, Jensen thinks, because they manage to avoid detection until past dusk, when they come to a small farmhouse with a small barn, not much more than a glorified shed, behind it. Jared tries the barn door, which opens, and cautiously pokes his head through. They don't want to find any more angry women with shotguns. But the place is empty, so they tiptoe inside.

"You think we could ask for a ride at the farmhouse?" Jared asks. "We could tell them our car broke down."

"And what if they want to take us back to Abilene?" Chris answers. "We'll sleep here, figure out what to do in the morning."

"We can steal another car," Chad suggests.

"Not with – " Chris starts to say, and stops.

"What?" Jensen whispers.

"Someone's coming."

The boys just stand there, unsure what to do but unable to immediately find a good place to hide. The barn door opens and a dog bounds in, barking.

"Bisou!" a man calls from outside.

 _Shit_ , Jensen thinks, because the dog finds them immediately and seems to think Jared and Chad are the most interesting things she's ever smelled. Jared bends down to rub her ears.

A man carrying a lantern walks into the barn, sees the boys with his dog, and comes over to them, holding the lantern up to peer at their faces.

"Who're you?" he demands. "What are you doing in my barn?"

"Our car broke down," Jared says, putting on his most trustworthy face.

The man seems to seriously consider that statement. The dog – Bisou – wanders around Chris and Jensen, sniffs their legs, sniffs the sacks of stolen money, and goes back to Jared. Jensen is very glad their coats more or less hide their guns.

"You're the boys robbed the Farmers and Merchants in Abilene," the man surprises them by saying, and before any of them can even open their mouths - to agree, to deny, to lie through their teeth - he continues, nodding at the bags Chris and Jensen are carrying, "You gonna tell me you got dirty clothes in those sacks? My sister called with the news. She and her husband lost their house to them sonsabitches. Had to move in with his folks, and that just ain't right." He scratches the stubble on his chin. "We been struggling around here. No one bears the banks any love. I won't turn ya in."

"Much obliged, Mr - ?" Jensen says.

"Morgan. Jeff Morgan. You can stay in the barn tonight if you want, but you oughta leave before sunrise. I can give you a ride to Brownwood where you can get a car, if you wanna get out of Texas. You maybe shouldn't take the bus." He clucks his tongue. "C'mon, Bisou." The dog stops sniffing around Jared and Chad and trots over to him.

There's dead silence in the barn until Jeff Morgan leaves, and then the boys sit down on the dirt floor and seriously discuss how they're going to get the hell out of Texas.

Chris says he has a friend in Kentucky, a guy named Steve who has a farm and can put them up for a few months. Just before dawn, Mr Morgan comes to get them to take them to Brownwood, as promised, and after two days of hard driving they're in the pinprick town of Bryantsville, Kentucky, settling into Steve's rambling farmhouse, preparing to lay low for a couple of months.

Steve raises, boards, and trains horses, he explains, and he can always use their help but the Depression hit him hard and there's not a lot for them to do.

"I'd like the company," he says, "and I missed this reprobate." He grabs Chris in a headlock and gives him a noogie. Jensen likes him on contact.

The boys have spent the better part of a year crisscrossing the midwest knocking over banks and stopping in big towns when they stop at all, and Steve's quiet farm feels like the middle of nowhere. At first it's relaxing, peaceful. Steve shows them around, introduces them to his one remaining stud, his few mares (one of which is pregnant), the three horses he's currently boarding. The boys learn how to feed, exercise, curry, and care for the animals, and when it comes out that Jared used to ride on his great-uncle's ranch, Steve lets them saddle up.

Jensen has never been on a horse before, and even though the mare Steve puts him on is sweet and gentle and seems to like him, he feels awkward and weird and kind of far from the ground, and as soon as she breaks into a trot, he falls off. The mare noses at his shoulder and snorts in his face, but he can't tell whether that's concern, encouragement, or horsey laughter.

"You ok, man?" Steve asks, leaning on his saddle to look down at where Jensen's sprawled on the dirt. "Don't let it spook you."

"I'm not spooked," Jensen says.

"He's just embarrassed," Chris explains. He slides off his horse to give Jensen a hand up. He's grinning. "I'm not laughing at you."

"Sure you are." But Jensen grins as well. He's not hurt, not even that sore, and the mare waits patiently while he climbs back into the saddle. He doesn't encourage her to move any faster than a quick walk, though.

The five of them pass the nights playing cards and bullshitting and reading and listening to the radio, and Steve plays his guitar and tries with some success to teach the boys the old cowboy and Appalachian folk songs he knows. Chad has a pretty decent voice once he stops clowning around, but Jared can't carry a tune in a bucket. Chris mentions the guitar he bought in St Louis and taught himself to play (and then had to abandon), so Steve lets him play his for a while. Jensen automatically falls into singing harmony alongside Chris, and when Steve makes a point of complimenting him, Jensen admits he used to sing in his church choir.

Christmas comes and goes – they cut down a tree and bake a ham, and Jared tries and fails to recreate his mom's peach pie with apples instead – and then a whole bunch of people descend on the farm for Steve's annual New Year's party.

"This is new," Chris comments, sounding surprised when yet another car comes down the drive and parks next to the house. He and Jensen have been sitting on the front porch for over an hour, trying to stay out of the way as people arrive and start setting up their stuff in the kitchen and living room and bedrooms. A couple of tents have even sprouted in the side yard. The boys have had to consolidate themselves with Chad and Jared, the four of them now all in one room, in order to make space for Steve's friends.

"Third year," Steve says. "You weren't around the last two." He grins. "You remember Aldis? He's bringing a couple friends. You'll like them. We'll eat and drink and be merry and to hell with the crap going on in the rest of the country. Right?"

Jensen thinks about Chad's party a year ago, how he wore his one good suit and danced with a pretty girl and ate his body weight in party food and played cards and got drunk on illicit punch and black market beer and had the kind of good time that made him glad he'd left Dallas. He remembers Jared's tradition of spending New Year's Eve with the people you want to spend the next year with, and is grateful that he's with good friends.

"John Dillinger's got nothing on us," Chad says that night, as they get dressed in the guest room they've been forced to share. They've been to Lexington to buy new clothes, since they arrived at Steve's with practically nothing, and now the four of them look at each other, at their sharp suits and polished shoes and new hats. The papers sometimes present John Dillinger as a bit of a fashion plate, but he's clearly not the only gangster with style. "Go get Steve and make him take our picture," he tells Chris, who rolls his eyes but goes.

There isn't enough space in the room for a good photo so they end up standing in the hallway, the four of them in their party clothes and – at Chad's insistence – armed like the bank robbers they've had to be. They look serious, and then smile, and then someone yells "Something's burning!" from down the hall, and Steve dashes off to avert a potential catastrophe.

Over the past two days Jensen has met the people now filling Steve's house, but he still feels kind of shy and awkward around them. Because Chris actually knows some of these people, he drags Jensen around, getting him involved in conversations, making him talk, sharing stories. He meets Aldis, who fake-spars with Chris in the kitchen, laughing as he pushes his hand against Chris' face to keep Chris back. (Aldis is a little taller than Chris and, like Jared, has a very long reach.) Aldis' friend Beth teases him mercilessly and jokes around with Jensen and Chris, although they quickly lose her to Chad's peculiar charm.

Chris, perhaps unsurprisingly, gets sucked into a poker game and at midnight Jensen finds himself outside with Jared and Steve and most of the guests, all of them whooping and hollering "Happy new year!" at each other and firing their guns into the air. He empties his pistol at the sky, temporarily crazy and ridiculously happy.

"Happy New Year, Jen," Jared says, grabbing him in a crushing hug and then, to Jensen's great surprise, kissing him on the mouth.

 _What the hell_ , Jensen thinks, kissing him back. It's New Year's Eve, he's had a couple glasses of tremendously strong moonshine, he's having a good night with guys he really likes.

It's not a long kiss, and he says "We kept your tradition," after they pull away from each other. "Spent the past year with the people we spent New Year's Eve with. I think we should do it again. Except that's a lot of people...." He gestures vaguely at the crowd in Steve's yard.

"Yeah, it's a good one, isn't it. I don't care if we see most of these people next year, though."

 _Me either_ , Jensen thinks, but a burst of gunfire distracts both of them, and then someone is pushing glasses of something cold into their hands, and they're back among a small swarm of excited, friendly strangers.

Steve's party, like Chad's a year ago, fills the house and the yard and continues into the wee hours, until the sky lightens and people stagger off to bed or collapse on couches and chairs and even the floor. And just like last year, Jensen finds himself singing "Auld Lang Syne" with Chris, the same four lines over and over as the dawn breaks, drunk and happy and full of love for his friends and hope for his future.

He wakes up briefly a few hours after falling asleep, and realizes he must have passed out in Jared's bed or Jared passed out in his, because Jared is sprawled all over him, breathing on his neck and snoring in his ear. Jensen can't bring himself to care, much less move, and lets himself fall unconscious again.

The next couple of months pass in more or less the same way as December, except without another giant party. One day in February, Jared and Chad appear in Steve's driveway in an old rag-top Marmon, a ten-year-old car that someone very clearly loves, if the perfect blue paint job and purring engine are any indication. Jensen can't imagine that someone might have sold it to them, even with Jared's uncanny ability to make people like him and do what he asks, but Chad insists it isn't stolen and Jensen really, really wants to believe him.

The four of them are admiring it when Steve comes around the house from the barn, sees them, and angrily demands "Where the hell did you get that?"

"We borrowed it," Chad says. "Isn't it gorgeous? It drives like a dream." He strokes the hood.

"There's one of those in the whole county, and I know the guy you stole it from. If he comes here looking for it I'm gonna let him have you." They've told Steve what they've been up to the last year, and he knows what it means to threaten something that could end with an official complaint against the boys.

"We weren't going to keep it," Jared says.

"Damn straight, you're not. Return it or I'll call him. What the fuck is wrong with you?" Steve gestures pointedly at the car and Chad and Jared climb back in the front seat, chastised.

Steve has adopted the tone of voice Jensen associates with his mother or Chris' sister laying the smackdown on misbehaving children or little brothers, and under other circumstances he might find it funny that Chad and Jared are on the receiving end, especially since Chad is even pouting a little. But the whole point of them being in Kentucky in the first place is to stay out of trouble, and Chad stealing cars is a little counterproductive. It's not as if he needs to steal one - they still have the used Ford they bought in Texas after the debacle in Abilene, the used Ford that got them here.

"Jen, you gotta ride in this car," Jared says, twisting around in his seat to try and open the back door. "We'll take it back," he tells Steve. "Promise."

" _You_ promise," Chad mutters, switching it on.

"Come on!" Jared pats the back of the front passenger seat encouragingly and Jensen reluctantly climbs in the car.

"Chris isn't busting you out of jail," Steve calls as Chad drives off.

As much as Jensen hates to admit it, this being an easily-recognizable stolen car instead of the interchangeable Fords and Chevrolets and Hudsons they usually take, the Marmon is a very nice ride. It's cold with the cloth top down and the wind in his face, but he thinks that someday, when they're done robbing banks and he has enough money to buy himself some land and take care of his family, he'll get a brand-new, top-of-the-line car like this one to tool around in.

They're getting antsy just hanging around Steve's place, and if he lets himself think about it too much, Jensen realizes they can't stay here much longer. Not just because Chad and Jared have already shown themselves incapable of behaving for more than two months, but because there are still banks out there hoarding good people's cash and taking good people's livelihoods. His folks still need him. Jennifer and her husband and her uncles still need Chris. If Jared's family and Chad's father and siblings are in dire straits, Jensen doesn't know for sure, but he'd bet they are, and they need their wayward boys as well.

So they can't stop, which means they can't stay here. They've rested up, they've ridden horses, they've had their quiet time. Soon they'll have to go.

Jensen wonders how long it will take until "We have to go" stops being a common phrase in his vocabulary. It feels like a very long time ago that he got to live a settled, straightforward life, and he hopes he'll remember how to do it when he's able to live that way again.

"Do you miss it?" he asks Jared one night. They're sitting on the front porch, on the stairs, looking out at the driveway and the yard. He gestures at Steve's land, letting it stand in for the quiet, normal life they left a year ago.

"Do I miss what?" Jared answers. "I never spent a lot of time on my great-uncle's ranch. I miss my dogs, though. My great-aunt said they made her feel safer so my parents gave them to her, so that's the only place I get to see them."

"I meant San Antonio. Your old life. Before we started robbing banks."

"I dunno," Jared shrugs. "Sometimes. I miss my family and my friends. I haven't talked to Sandy in forever. I really should - she knows what the FBI's up to."

"Sometimes I don't even remember how we did it. Do you like living like this?" It sounds like a loaded question to Jensen's ears, but Jared takes it seriously.

"I like being on Steve's farm." He scratches his nose, apparently thinking about his answer. "My mom teaches high school. She doesn't make a lot of money. Jeff's probably a dad by now – wow, I might be an uncle. Cool." He grins. "I bet he needs help, though, buying stuff and taking care of his wife and his kid. I mean, babies are expensive. So I'm helping them. We're doing something, you know?" He turns to look at Jensen. "What are you thinking, Jen? Do you want to quit?"

"We can't." Now Jensen shrugs. "You said it – we're doing something. We're helping out. I just kind of wish there was another way."

"But this is working. Think about it – it's been a year and we've never been caught. We haven't killed anyone. We haven't even hurt anyone. We're taking from the rich and fighting back on behalf of the poor. We've stolen a lot of money." Jared sounds impressed with their work. "I guess we'll have to stop eventually," he goes on, putting his hand on Jensen's shoulder. "But I don't want to yet. It's kind of fun."

So in March they pack up the Ford they legitimately bought in Texas, thank Steve for his hospitality and his patience, and say goodbye.

"Let me give you some names," Steve says, before offering the assistance of some of his friends in other states. "If you need help, give any of these guys a call. Tell them I sent you. They're good people."

"I can't thank you enough, man," Chris tells him, hugging Steve in gratitude. "You never saw us."

"So that weird stain on my kitchen wall just happened on its own, huh?" Steve grins. Jared looks sheepish. "Come back any time. I mean it. You're good company."

"Hopefully the next time will be under better circumstances," Jensen says.

"You guys take care of yourselves. Don't go looking for trouble."

"We already got mayhem," Chad says brightly, and Chris smacks him on the side of the head.

"Come on," Jared calls, "get in the car already." He's already settled into the driver's seat. "Thanks, Steve. It's been a while since I got to ride."

"Go on, you criminals, get going!" Steve waves them off, and they cruise out to the road and out of Kentucky.

  
_Spring 1934  
Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana_   


  


It never takes them long to get back into the swing of things, and they only need a brief adjustment period in St Louis, a city they remember well and fondly. It's also the home of Steve's friends Jason and Krista, who are more than happy to have the boys over for dinner and to get acquainted. Krista is very pregnant but refuses their help with anything more difficult than getting stuff of a high shelf, although she does let Jared listen to her belly and feel for any baby kicks.

But the banks beckon, as they always do, and Peoples Bank in Troy is particularly inviting and unguarded.

At least, it looks that way when Chad drops the other three off at the entrance and they stride into the bank holding up their guns and demanding cooperation. Jared covers the door, Chris covers the tellers, Jensen takes the bank manager to open the vault.

It's not even two minutes before Chris interrupts him.

"Jen!" he yells. "We got cops! We gotta leave!"

"But – "

"Take what you got and let's go!" Chris gestures with his shotgun and Jensen snatches the bag of money with his gun hand and the back of the bank manager's jacket with his other and follows Chris out.

Jensen pushes the manager out the door in front of him – the poor man is crying "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I have three kids!" – and sees two cops on the sidewalk behind him and what could be another cop or an FBI agent in front of him. The car's right there. He watches Chad aim out the driver's side window and fire, watches one of the cops duck, hears Chris yell "Come on!" from where he's half inside the car.

One of the cops behind him shoots over his head. He lets go of the bank manager, startled. The cop in front of him trains a gun on him.

"Hands up!" the cop demands. "Drop the money!"

"Jen!" That could be Chris or Jared, he can't tell.

"Go!" he yells back. "I'll be fine!"

He won't, he knows he won't, but that's besides the point. The longer they idle in front of the bank, the greater the chances someone will get shot and they'll all go to jail. Better just him. This way they'll be free to get him out.

He lets go of the bank manager and holds up his hands. One of the cops rushes up, grabs his arms, yanks them down and behind him, and snaps cuffs on his wrists. They stuff him into a squad car and drive him to the jail, where they fingerprint him, photograph him, and book him.

He's assigned a public defender, a Mr Flanery, who promises to try and get him a reduced sentence based on the fact that it's never been proven that he killed anyone. That's how he phrases it – "No one ever proved you killed anyone" – and Jensen wants to protest that it's because he _hasn't_ killed anyone. Hell, for a number of months he robbed banks with an empty gun. He prays that the others think to call Jason and Krista, because he doesn't hold out much hope in this man.

The best Jensen can say about his lawyer is that the prosecutor wants to hold the trial in St Louis, in a big city court, necessitating moving Jensen to a larger, higher-security jail, but Mr Flanery appeals to the sheriff's pride in her prison and manages to keep the trial – and Jensen – in this small town. The sheriff, a woman apparently named Sam Ferris, bristles at the idea that her guards can't hold on to one lone bank robber and that her town might not be able to field an impartial jury, and tells the prosecutor in no uncertain terms that Mr Ackles is staying right here in her jail.

Jensen hates that he's thinking about these things, that he likes this court-appointed attorney because the guy is making it easy for Jensen's friends to bust him out. He hates it but at the same time he'd rather be grateful for a chance to avoid doing time, than be worrying about how he's going to survive doing time. If his mother could see him now, she'd cry.

* * * * *

Jim is not unused to getting out-of-state phone calls from men in the various branches of law enforcement, be they detectives or chiefs of police or Rangers or FBI agents. But he is unused to getting calls from female sheriffs who want to talk to him about criminals in their custody.

"Agent Beaver," this woman says, "my name is Samantha Ferris and I'm the sheriff of Troy, Missouri. I believe I have in my jail a man who held up one of your banks last January."

"You know almost as much about him as I do," Jim tells her, trying to disguise his sudden excitement. "Go on."

In fifteen minutes this Sheriff Ferris gives him at least as much information as he's been able to find in more than a year of trying. She can only give him one name – she only has one name – but she can also give him a city, and it's a start.

After they hang up he just stares at the phone for a minute. Someday he'd like to meet this Sheriff Ferris in person and buy her a drink.

"Miss McCoy!" he yells.

"Sir?" Miss McCoy appears in his doorway.

"Stop with the ‘sir'. Call the Dallas office, speak to Agent Sands. Tell him we'll be there bright and early tomorrow morning with the information we have on the Jay Gang, and I expect him to share anything he has. I don't expect him to have much, but don't say that. Tell him I've been collecting information from other sources. Tell him or don't tell anyone, got it?"

"Not the SAC?"

"Dallas SAC's not gonna help me. I already talked to him. His hands are full with his own mess. Ask for Agent Sands, leave a message to have him call you back if he's not there. That's it. Ok?"

"Talk to Agent Sands or don't talk to anyone. Yes sir – sorry, sorry. I got it."

"Good. We're gonna get these boys." He turns towards the back room. What the hell are they doing back there? "Collins! Downey! Pack your bags, we're going to Dallas!"

* * * * *

The same day Sheriff Ferris announces that Jensen is staying put, which is the same day she calls the FBI in San Antonio, he gets a visitor.

"Your wife's here, Ackles," one of the guards tells him, coming into the day room to snap cuffs on his wrists and lead him into the visiting room.

To Jensen's great surprise, Krista from St Louis is sitting at a table, looking exceptionally pregnant in a flowered dress and with a straw purse resting on her round baby belly. Jensen schools his face to look more excited at seeing his "wife", and less surprised that she's probably here as part of a plan to bust him out.

"Hi honey," he says, leaning over the table to give her a kiss, and missing completely.

"How are they treating you?" she asks. "Are you getting enough sleep?"

It's such an absurd thing to ask, and she looks so incongruously concerned, that he laughs.

"Is that a no?" She still looks concerned, which means she's either a very good actress or genuinely worried about him. Or possibly both.

"That's kind of a no."

Jensen isn't entirely sure how convincingly he can play the part of loving, incarcerated husband, but Krista doesn't seem at all concerned about his ability to keep up the charade. She leads the conversation and he follows, and her code is easy to interpret – Jason is her brother, Chris is Jensen's cousin, Steve is the guy who married Krista's sister. Because they've already spent some time together, pretending to be happily married isn't as hard as Jensen would have thought. Besides, he's had a lot of practice pretending to be a bank robber, and it's not difficult to act like he cares about Krista and is glad to see her.

They don't get a lot of time, but it's enough. Jensen has faith that his friends are looking after him and working to get him out of this place.

After maybe twenty minutes, the guard announces that visiting hours are over and it's time for Mrs Ackles to leave.

"Give me a kiss before I go," Krista says, and, mindful of the guard watching and Krista's actual husband no doubt worrying, Jensen kisses her chastely on the mouth. "Excuse me?" she says to the guard, her voice half softness and half steel. "Do you mind? Can I get a little privacy with my husband here?" She makes a twirling motion with her finger, apparently indicating that she'd like the guard to turn around, and he grunts and turns his head halfway to the side.

"Give me a real kiss," Krista tells Jensen, eyes twinkling. He's pretty sure she's giving him a hint. He should take it.

 _Your husband is going to kill me_ , he thinks, but he dutifully takes her face between his cuffed hands and kisses her like he means it, like they're the most happily married couple on the planet, like this isn't just a ruse for... whatever it is she's planning. After twenty minutes of conversation, all he knows for sure is that there seems to be a plan. He hasn't a clue what it actually is.

When they break for air, she pulls his hands off her face, covers them with hers folded over her belly, and manages to pass a very small handgun into his palm. She smiles fondly, then leans in again, ostensibly to kiss him on the cheek.

"Eight tonight," she whispers in his ear. "Jared and Chris are coming."

"I owe you more than I can ever repay," he whispers back. "Don't tell Jason I kissed you."

She pulls away. "Be good for the nice guards," she says, patting his cheek before heaving herself to her feet. The guard comes over to help her but she waves him off. She does however let him escort her to the door, and in the brief minute when he's alone, Jensen sticks the very small pistol into his waistband under his shirt, where he can cover it with his cuffed hands held in front of him.

They took his watch along with everything else he was wearing when they booked him, so Jensen has only a vague idea what time it is when he and his fellow prisoners are herded into their cells after dinner. He hopes like hell it's almost eight because Jesus Christ, it's boring in here.

He hears yelling and a gunshot in the corridor outside his cell, jumps off the bed, and tries to see past the bars holding him in.

"Jen!" someone yells – it sounds like Chris – and then his cell door opens along with apparently everyone else's, and he's free.

Well, free of the cell, anyway. Getting out of the jail is a whole other thing.

He starts down the corridor, heading towards the voice, and then Chris is there, carrying an overcoat and a shotgun, grabbing Jensen's arm and hurrying him along.

"Put this on," Chris says as they jog down the corridor, handing Jensen the coat. "Where's the gun Krista gave you?"

"Stop!" a guard yells behind them, and Chris half-shoves Jensen out of the way to take a shot at the guy.

"Go, go!" They're through the door to the cellblock, almost in the day room. Jensen's fellow prisoners crowd around and past them.

 _This must've been Chad's idea_ , Jensen thinks, _to break me out by causing chaos. He's "Mayhem" for a reason._

"That way" – Chris points to a door – "that's the kitchen. Chad should be outside."

"Where's Jared?"

Another guard, or maybe the same one, fires into the crowd, and Chris shoves Jensen hard through the kitchen door, where they're surprised by a cop – not just a prison guard, but an actual cop – who has just enough time to point his pistol at them before Jared appears behind him and whacks him on the head with the butt of a rifle, knocking the man out cold.

"Where were you?" Chris demands, but before Jared can answer he's hustling Jensen outside and slamming the door closed behind them.

Jensen realizes the little handgun that Krista helpfully passed to him that afternoon is still in his cell, under his mattress. He feels really, really stupid, and really, really useless.

"Come on," Jared urges, grabbing Jensen's sleeve and yanking him along the back wall of the jail. Bells and sirens are going off everywhere, no doubt signaling a jailbreak, and even though they're in an alley and not out on the street, it's a wide alley designed for deliveries and there's nowhere to hide. They'll be lucky if no one thinks to go out through the kitchen to look for them.

They creep along the wall to the corner of the building and Chris peers around it. "Where is he?" he hisses over his shoulder.

Then a car turns into the alley from the other end and flicks its lights at them as it pulls closer.

The driver's side window rolls down and Chad leans out. Jensen hadn't known he was holding his breath until he starts breathing again.

"Get in!" Chad snaps, and they do. He doesn't even stop the car, although he does slow down for them, and as soon as he's out of the alley and on the street he steps on the gas and zooms away, leaving the sirens and escaping prisoners and angry, frustrated guards behind them.

He drives in almost complete silence for about ten minutes, the four of them no doubt relieved their jailbreak went off ok without any of them getting hurt.

Jared is rummaging through the glove box, probably looking for a map, when he pulls out a piece of paper, squints at it, and exclaims "Shit, guys, we stole the sheriff's car."

"What?" Chris says from the back seat. He leans over Jared's shoulder.

"I found the registration. Ferris. Isn't that the sheriff?"

"Samantha Ferris," Jensen murmurs. "Oh Jesus Christ." First she unintentionally makes it easy for Chris and Chad and Jared to break him out, then she unintentionally makes it easy for them to get away.

By some miracle they make it back to Jason and Krista's house in St Louis, where they stop just long enough to throw some things in the sheriff's Ford before vanishing out of Missouri.

"We can't ever go back there," Jensen says. Add it to the list of places they can never return.

"It's too bad," Chad muses. "I liked St Louis."

It turns out that freeing all the prisoners and hoping the chaos covered Jensen's escape was indeed Chad's idea. Chad's proud that his plan worked, but Jensen can tell that Chris wants more and more to smack him silly.

"I'm not doing this any more," Chris mutters, a couple of weeks later. "That boy's gonna get us killed."

It doesn't help that the papers are full of news about more famous gangsters – Dillinger, Nelson, the Barkers – and the FBI's "war" on crime. The boys know that someone somewhere has a name for them and considers them a criminal gang as well, and it seems more and more as if their days as bank robbers are numbered.

Jensen thinks about the pinched look his mother wore continuously the last time he saw her, and how defeated his father seemed. He thinks about Chris' uncles having to abandon the farm their grandfather homesteaded. He thinks about bank foreclosures. He thinks about all the money that has passed through their hands the past sixteen months, money they've spent or lost or carried with them or sent home. He realizes he has no idea how much money that is.

He thinks about someday, maybe, having a house of his own. Some land. A good bed to sleep in. The ability to take those looks off his parents' faces forever.

He hopes his capture in Missouri wasn't a harbinger of things to come.

"One more job," he tells Chris. "I'll talk to him."

"You think he's gonna listen to you? Boy calls himself _Mayhem_. You think he's gonna listen to anyone?"

"He'll listen to Jared." Jensen sighs. "Tell you what. If it gets that bad, you can hog-tie him and leave him in front of the police station in San Antonio."

"Don't tease me," Chris says, but he's smiling.

It's a month or so after Jensen's big jailbreak when the boys feel secure and safe enough to waltz through the front door of a bank in Prescott, Arkansas, a bank that (like the Farmers and Merchants in Abilene) looks easier to take than it really is.

And just like their first robbery in San Antonio, all it takes is one voice yelling "Stop!" and one person raising a gun for everything to change.

The most terrifying sound in the world, Jensen thinks, is the sound of someone cocking a shotgun, when you know that someone is not on your side. He and Jared both freeze – Chris is already out the door – and then Chad leans on the horn outside, the spell breaks, and they're both running. There are men in suits outside, maybe FBI agents, and they look armed and competent. Chris is throwing himself in the front seat of the car, the cops are yelling at them to stop, and when a gun goes off Jensen thinks it's Chris trying to cover their escape.

It's not.

Jared stumbles into him and Jensen reflexively grabs his arm as Chris pushes the back door open and they shove themselves into the car. Chad peels away from the curb before the door's even closed, tearing through an intersection while FBI agents fire at them from the sidewalk. The car rocks around one corner, then another, Chad apparently trying to confuse anyone who might be following. Jensen looks behind them, but no one is.

Jensen realizes he's still holding on to Jared's arm, and that Jared is squeezing his leg. Jared has a very strong grip.

"You can let go of me now," Jensen says, trying to pry Jared's fingers off his thigh. "We lost them. We're going to – what's wrong?" Jared's face is pale. He looks a lot baffled, and a little scared.

"I think I got shot," he says. He looks down at his arm, the one pressed against the door, and his eyes get wide. "Jen." His hand tightens on Jensen's leg. Jensen leans around him and is pretty sure his own face goes pale at the sight of the dark stain that is definitely blood spreading down Jared's sleeve.

He must make a noise, or Jared does, because Chris twists around in the front seat, apparently takes in the scene, and swears "Jesus H Roosevelt Christ", which has the odd effect of snapping Jensen out of his shock.

"Let me see," he says, trying to get Jared to turn towards him so he can get a better look at the wound. Jared hisses in pain but shifts himself and lifts his arm a little. "Chris, give me your – " As Jensen looks over at Chris to ask for his tie to make a bandage – it's the first thing he can think of – Chad cranes his head around to see over his shoulder and the car swerves in the road.

"Road!" Chris snaps at him.

"I'm ok," Jared says breathlessly, the most patently ridiculous thing he's ever said.

"Chad," Jensen tells him, "watch the road. Chris, give me your tie. Jared? Are you with me? Keep breathing, ok? I'm just going to try and bandage it." He flaps his hand in Chris' direction and is rewarded with a length of patterned silk tie draped over his palm.

The most terrifying sound in the world, he thinks now, is not the sound of someone cocking a shotgun. It's the sound of someone gasping in pain as you try to bind the bullet wound in his arm in a moving car.

Chad, to his great credit, keeps driving at top speed until they're clear of Prescott and pulling into some random little town about twenty minutes away. It's not far enough for Jensen's comfort but they can't keep going indefinitely, they should ditch the car, and Jared really needs some medical attention. He's conscious but pale and sweating and in pain, and Jensen is pretty sure he's scared to death.

Chad bounces off the road – Jared barely stifles a yelp – and stops close enough to a stand of trees for them to hustle themselves out and hide.

"Don't go anywhere," he commands. "I'm getting rid of the car and looking for a pharmacy." He drives off.

"Well, shit," Chris mutters.

"Come here," Jensen tells Jared. Jared just blinks, so Jensen walks over to him. "Let me see your arm."

Jared's coat sleeve and Chris' tie are both covered in blood, and when Jensen carefully unknots his makeshift bandage Jared grabs at him and says, faintly, "I think I oughta sit down."

"Don't pass out on me. Can you get your coat off? Chris, get over here and help me."

Between the three of them they get Jared's coat off, which means Jensen can rip out the clean sleeve and use it and his own tie to wrap Jared's arm again. Jared finally sits down in the grass, leans against a tree, and promptly passes out.

"We need some help," Jensen says, talking to Chris even though he's looking at Jared.

"We can handle this," Chris tells him.

"No we can't. Did you see that wound?"

"Bullet went clean through. You know we can't take him to a hospital."

"I didn't say we should. Let me think."

"You got five minutes."

 _I got until Chad comes back_ , Jensen thinks, but what he says is "We'll go to Danneel's. She shouldn't be more than a couple hours away, the way Chad drives."

"Danneel. When's the last time you talked to her, Jen? A year? Two?"

"A long time ago. I don't remember." He's written to her, but the last time they actually talked on the phone? He hasn't a clue.

"What makes you think the FBI hasn't gotten to her? You read the papers – they're tapping phones now."

"If she hasn't heard from me in a year and a half, how would they even know to look for her? Besides, she can lie with the best of them. She can say she hasn't seen or heard from me in ten years and they'll believe her. They're not gonna think there's a reason to watch her."

"You want to lie low, we'll go back to Steve's. He's got the space, he knows us – you want to leave Chad in the same room as your ex? – and we're not wanted in Kentucky. Where the hell is she now, anyway?"

"Shreveport."

"Shreveport," Chris repeats flatly.

"Stop fucking repeating everything I say. Yeah, Shreveport. We're not wanted in Louisiana either."

"That's more than a couple hours' drive, Jen."

"I don't think it is. You got a better idea?"

"If he can make it" – Chris gestures at Jared, now stretched out on the grass – "we should go back to Steve's. Or we can find a motel and stay here a day or two."

"We can't stay here. We're thirty fucking minutes from Prescott. We need to get out of the state." Chris opens his mouth, no doubt to argue some more. "Danneel's a _nurse_ , Chris."

Well, she's a nursing student, or she was the last time he heard from her.

Chad eventually returns with a nondescript black Ford, a roll of gauze, a few cotton pads, and a bottle of iodine.

"Iodine," Chris says, raising an eyebrow.

"What?" Chad snaps. "I don't know – I never had to treat a gunshot wound before!"

They wake Jared up, put the cotton pads on his arm over his coat sleeve, wrap them with the gauze, and help him into the car.

"Shreveport," Jensen tells Chad, when they're all in.

"What's in Shreveport?"

"A nurse. Go south."

They stop at a gas station just inside the city so Jensen can call Danneel, make sure she's home, and warn her that he's about to turn up on her front step with a bleeding friend, but whoever picks up the phone and says "Hello?" doesn't sound like her.

"Danny?" he asks.

"No, I'm her roommate," the voice says. "Genevieve. Who're you?"

"My name's Jensen, I'm a friend of hers. Is she home?"

"She's housesitting." This Genevieve sounds dubious, and Jensen can't blame her. "Oh, I know who you are!" she says. "Danneel's mentioned you. You're from Dallas."

"Not for a while. Look, where is she? I have to see her." He covers the mouthpiece and hisses "What?" at Chris, who is making faces at him.

"Are you in town?"

"Just now, yeah. Genevieve, please, I need to see her, where is she?"

"What's going on?" Chris whispers. "She's not home, is she. I said this was – "

"Shut up," Jensen hisses.

"Excuse me?" Genevieve says sharply.

"Not you, sorry. Where's Danny?"

"Let me find the address, hold on."

"I'm talking to Danny's roommate," he tells Chris. "She's housesitting. We'll go there. Calm the fuck down."

Genevieve gives Jensen the address where Danneel is staying and some vague directions on how to get there from the highway, and they only get lost twice before they find the house. Chad pulls into the driveway like they belong there but Jensen makes the other three stay in the car while he walks around to the back and knocks on the kitchen door.

"Gen called to tell me you were coming," Danneel says as she opens the door and ushers Jensen in. He knows she means her roommate, but it throws him to hear the shortened form of his name applied to someone else to his face. "Give me a hug and tell me why you're here." She seems pleasantly surprised to see him and not at all suspicious.

"I really, really need your help," he says into her shoulder. "My friend's hurt." She pushes him back and peers at his face. "I'm fine. He's outside. Can I bring – "

"You must be Danny," Chad says, appearing in the half-open kitchen door with Chris, the two of them practically carrying Jared between them. They look a little overburdened. "I'm Chad, that's Chris, the walking wounded is Jared, where's, oh, there's a chair."

"Um," Danneel says.

"Call her Danneel," Jensen says. "This is... yeah. My friend who needs help."

Jared looks terrible in the light of the kitchen, worse than he looked in Arkansas. His arm is bent over his head to elevate it, and when Danneel gently pulls it straight so she can look at it, he winces.

"Hey, Danny," Chris says, his tone oddly casual, considering the circumstances.

"Hey, Chris," she answers, distracted. She unwraps Jared's arm, which seems to be bleeding a little less. Jensen notices that Chad is squeezing Jared's other shoulder, and is grateful that at least someone can offer some kind of comfort.

"This is a gunshot wound," Danneel says, in a tone of voice that seems to imply she thinks they'll lie to her about how it happened. "Doesn't look like a very large caliber bullet, at least." She picks at Jared's shirtsleeve and tries to look at his arm from every angle without having to move it too much. "Actually, this should close up on its own. I need to wash it out and clean up the edges and bandage it, but you won't need stitches. The bullet went right through, missed the bone. You're lucky."

"Yay," Jared mumbles, and then "Ow."

"Sorry. Chris, get me a towel. Bottom drawer next to the sink. Wet it with warm water. You guys got any more of these pads?"

"They're in the car," Chad says.

"Go get them." He leaves. Danneel takes the wet towel from Chris. "There's a doctor's bag in the bathroom," she tells him. "Go get it for me." He does so and Danneel starts gently wiping Jared's arm, trying to clean up the wound and wash the blood away. His shirtsleeve is soaked, but she can't roll it up far enough to get to the hole in his arm. Jensen has no idea what to do with himself, besides watch her hands instead of Jared's face.

"Do you have any bourbon or whiskey or something?" Chad asks, returning with the extra cotton pads and the roll of gauze.

"Chad, come on," Chris says, annoyed. He puts the doctor's bag on the kitchen table, and Danneel turns her attention from Jared's arm long enough to open it, root through it, and pull out a pair of small, sharp scissors.

"It's not for me."

Jared weakly waves his good arm.

"Stop moving," Danneel tells him. "Sideboard in the dining room," she tells Chad, who goes to get it. She cuts off Jared's shirtsleeve near the shoulder, wipes the remaining blood from his skin, and dabs around the wound with a cotton ball. She peers at it, digs a pair of long, pointy tweezers out of the doctor's bag, and very carefully picks at some cotton threads that seem to have gotten stuck in it.

Jensen has to look away.

Danneel doesn't say anything more, other than occasionally reminding Jared to breathe, and none of the boys say anything either. Eventually she's finished, Jared's arm is cleaned and rebandaged, and Jensen thinks that everything might actually be ok. Maybe.

"This might take six weeks to fully close up," Danneel tells Jared, "and probably six months to heal completely. You can't stay here, but go lie down in the bigger bedroom and try to rest a little bit while I figure out where to take you. Drink some bourbon. Not too much. Don't bleed on the sheets. You go watch him." She points to Chad. "You go lie down in the other bedroom," she tells Chris, and "You stay here," to Jensen, as he starts to stand up. He sits back down. After the other three have left, she fixes him with a Look and asks "What are you mixed up in, Jen?"

"Do you read the papers?"

"Sometimes."

"Watch the newsreels before the movie?"

"Of course."

"Have you heard of the Jay Gang?"

"I think so. Maybe. Why?"

"That's us. We rob banks."

He's not sure what kind of reaction he was expecting, but laughter isn't it.

"Oh," she finally says, realizing that he's not laughing with her. "You're serious."

"Jared was shot leaving a bank in Arkansas. We've never been to Louisiana, we know the FBI won't look for us here."

"The FBI?" she repeats in disbelief.

"Yeah." He hopes he looks sheepish, because he certainly feels it.

"Shit, Jensen. What happened? You were always an honest guy." She sighs. "Ok, fine. Now you really can't stay here – if your friend's going to bleed on someone's sheets, better he bleed on mine." She stands and starts cleaning up.

"I'm sorry, Danny," he says. He grabs her hand. "We can't go to a hospital. I didn't know what else to do."

"Why do you do it? Rob banks." She looks genuinely curious. Not judgemental, not accusatory, not even disbelieving. Just curious.

"My parents need the money. Chris has a couple uncles who lost their farm."

"Maybe you shouldn't tell me." She pulls her hand away, takes the scissors and bloody towel and drops them in the sink. "Come on. We'll sit on the couch and act like normal people and then you'll all come home with me."

They sit on the couch and talk and Jensen can't believe how awake he is after the day he's had, but when he mentions it Danneel just tells him it's adrenaline and he'll crash eventually. And he does, but not for another couple of hours, not until after Danneel takes them back to her place, the situation is briefly (and not entirely truthfully) explained to Genevieve, and Jared is put to bed in Danneel's room. Jensen plops down in an armchair and the next thing he knows it's morning and Chris is shaking his shoulder and telling him there's coffee.

They hole up in Danneel's apartment for almost two weeks, despite the fact that six people in a space usually occupied by two makes things unpleasantly cramped. But Danneel and Genevieve, who is also a recently-graduated nurse, are gone during the day and a few nights, and Jensen and Chris and Chad can, if necessary, make themselves scarce. Danneel gets Jared a sling for his arm and doses him with antibiotics and painkillers when he spikes a fever. Genevieve develops a crush on him and takes over his medical care, much to Chad's inarticulate annoyance.

Jensen suspects Chad is annoyed because he thinks Genevieve is cute, and if Jared weren't wounded and in need of nursing, Chad would have a fair shot at her. Danneel thinks it's because Chad wants to be the one taking care of Jared, since he and Jared have been friends for so long.

The boys buy some clothes and toiletries, scour the papers for useful news, try to keep their heads down, try not to worry. Jared seems to be recovering as well as can be expected, which is some relief, but Jensen can't forget Danneel's assessment of how long it will take him to heal, and he can't stop thinking about what it means for their criminal career.

She doesn't repeat a word of what Jensen told her at the house, that the boys are bank robbers and wanted men, and he's as grateful for that as he is for her caretaking.

"You're a good friend," he tells her one night, without preamble. She's in the kitchen cleaning up Chris' attempt to make dinner.

"I know," she says. He kisses her on the cheek and can feel her grin.

"I don't know how I can ever pay you back."

"Oh, I know," she says, turning her head to leer at him. He laughs. "Not with all these other people in my house, though. But we could've had sex while I was housesitting." She flicks soapsuds at him. "Go sit with your friends, unless you want to help me wash the dishes."

"Chris should be doing that."

"He should! Chris!" she yells into the other room. "You should be doing the dishes!"

She repeats Jensen's words back to him much later that night as he's sitting a chair next to her bed watching Jared sleep.

"Don't blame yourself," she adds.

"I don't," he says. It's true. He doesn't.

"You love him, don't you."

"He's my friend. Of course I do." Then he remembers the kiss he and Jared shared on New Year's Eve and wonders what definition of "love" and "friend" either of them means.

Not that it really matters – he has more important things to worry about.

Danneel squeezes his shoulder. "You're a good guy, Jen. Robbing banks doesn't sit right on you."

"I have to do it. I had to."

"'Had'?"

"I don't know, Danny. I don't think I can do it any more. I don't want anyone else to get shot. Chris is going to beat the shit out of Chad one day, I swear."

"They don't like each other, do they." She chuckles.

"Chris doesn't." He sighs. "I keep thinking I'm putting my parents in danger, like the FBI is going to find them or something, because of what I've done."

"You know I don't want to know the details." She lets go of his shoulder, ruffles his hair, and kisses him on the top of his head. "Go to bed. Try and sleep. You'll figure something out. I'll help you as long as you need me."

"Thank you." He stands up, brushes his hand over her hair, and kisses her on the mouth. "Sometimes I'm sorry we broke up."

"I'm not." But she's smiling. She pats him on the cheek, "Go to bed, Jensen. You need the rest."

A couple days later he's napping in Danneel's room when she shakes him awake, hard.

"You have to leave," she hisses in his ear.

"Wha-?"

"There is a policeman outside, on the sidewalk." She's enunciating very clearly, which means she's either pissed off or scared. Or both, considering. "Gen passed him on her way back from the store. He is staking out the building, waiting for _you_. Chad went out the back to the alley and is getting a car, and the four of you are going to get out of here."

That means Chad is stealing a car. Well, what other options do they have? Jensen hauls himself off the bed. "Shit."

With the girls' help, he and Chris pack up their stuff and hustle themselves and Jared downstairs and out the back of the building. Jensen hates having to rush their goodbyes – he knows they might have just put Danneel and Genevieve on the FBI's radar, and the girls helped them out more than he can repay – but they can't stick around.

Chad drives south for lack of any better ideas, and the boys spend a good half hour arguing about where to go next. Jensen thinks they should avoid any state where they might be wanted men. Chris points out that every state they can immediately get to falls into that category, except Mississippi. Chad wants to go to New Orleans but is voted down. Chris mentions his friend David in Houston. Jared thinks Kentucky would be good, except he doesn't want to bounce around in the car that long. His arm aches.

Against Jensen's better judgement, despite his vociferous disagreement, and because Chris insists David can hide them as did Steve and Danneel, they go to Houston. But they discover that David packed up and moved at the beginning of the year, chasing potential oil money farther west. The boys rent a cabin at a tourist court just outside the city and hunker down while Jared's arm heals up. Jensen is sure this is tempting fate.

Then they read about the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde in the paper, and Chad suggests the four of them take a trip to Dallas.

"We're not going to Dallas to gawk at Bonnie Parker's funeral," Chris says. "Show some respect."

"You can see your folks," Chad tells Jensen. Jensen just shakes his head. He can send them money, he can save them money, but he can't see them. He won't put them in jeopardy like that. He doesn't even like being in the same state as they are, never mind the same city.

"I can see your folks," Jared says brightly. Jensen just raises an eyebrow at him, and Jared grins.

"I bet that's why there were cops crawling around Shreveport," Jensen muses. "They were looking for the Barrows. You know how close we came to getting caught?"

"We keep being close," Chad says dismissively, "and we keep not getting caught."

" _I_ got caught. You remember Missouri, right?"

"I got caught," Jared adds. "Sort of." He lifts his elbow in Chad's direction.

"And yet we're all still here," Chad says. "With money."

"It's a matter of time," Chris says. "Jensen's right. We can't keep doing this. I don't want to go to jail, and I _really_ don't want to end up like Clyde Barrow."

"Well good, because who'd be Bonnie?" Chad grins. Jared smacks him on the back of the head. "Hey!"

"Danneel said it would take six months for my arm to totally heal," Jared says. "I can't hold up a bank one-handed."

"You can drive. You can steal cars. Do you want to take a five-month break?"

"No."

"I don't want to do it any more," Jensen says. Chad goggles at him. He just shrugs. "I'm tired. I want to be a normal person and live a normal life and sleep in the same bed for more than two weeks at a time. I want to buy a house. I want some land. I don't want to worry that I'm getting my friends and my parents in trouble. I don't want to live out of the fucking car for another few months until the FBI catches up to us, and I sure as hell am not going back to jail."

"Maybe we should sleep on it," Chad concedes.

"I'll think the same way in the morning."

And he does.

Chad seems more amenable after they've slept, but still not ready to quit the criminal life, and it takes another full day of discussion and argument to get him to even consider giving it up.

The morning after that, they send him out to find a decent breakfast, and while he's gone Chris makes coffee in the tiny cabin kitchen and he and Jensen and Jared seriously discuss hanging up their guns and their gangster disguise and going straight. The risks are becoming too great, and each hold-up disaster is worse than the one before.

Chad is still a little resistant but actually seems more agreeable than he has been, and just to make sure, Jared takes him out for a drive after breakfast.

"We should split up," Chris says to Jensen, while they're gone. "Go our separate ways. We'll be harder to track. I'll get ahold of Steve, let him know where I am, so you can always find me."

Jensen doesn't love this idea – he's gotten used to living and traveling with the other three, Chris has been his best friend for years, he's pretty sure he's started to care for Jared more than he'll admit, and he just isn't sure he's ready to head into the world alone – but it makes sense.

"I'll do the same," he agrees. "We should do it today, when Chad and Jared get back."

"Maybe you'll find a golf club that'll have you." Chris grins, teasing, and Jensen punches him in the shoulder.

"I'm gonna miss you, man."

"I haven't left yet. We'll get back together, Jen. We're too good together to be apart for too long."

Chad and Jared finally return with a second car, a dark red Ford that Chad insists Jared broke into one-handed. The extra car seems like a sign to Jensen.

"I hope that's the last car I ever have to steal," Jared says, and that seems like a sign too. Jensen notices him flexing the fingers of his wounded arm.

"Are you ok?" he asks.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing. Chris thinks we should all split up and I agree with him."

Chad nods. Jared scratches his nose thoughtfully.

"You want to take off by yourself?" he asks.

"Not really," Jensen admits, "but it's safer."

"Well, I've been shot, you've been to jail – seems like the two of us have already tempted Fate and won."

"You want to come with me?"

"Yeah. I want to come with you." He grins. Chad snickers. "Shut up, Murray."

" _Mayhem_ ," Chad insists.

Chris smacks Chad on the side of the head one more time for posterity, and just like that, that's the end of the Jay Gang.

* * * * *

Jim Beaver, FBI Cowboy, San Antonio SAC, is not having a good day. The former Detective Downey is now firmly on his way to being Agent Downey, and the San Antonio chief of police is pissed. Jim's daughter is down with a cold, Collins is alternately scatterbrained and highly focused and the constant switching is giving Jim whiplash, and Tigerman might be looking to move to another office, or even out of the Bureau altogether. Miss McCoy has been more distracted than Jim has ever seen her which means she keeps misfiling things and forgetting to take phone messages and losing papers. He hopes it isn't boy trouble. He doesn't know how to talk to his secretary about personal matters.

And after Jim's brief trip to Dallas and a promising lead in Arkansas, the trail of the Jay Gang has gone cold. There was a potential sighting in Louisiana, but any effort he could have put into following it up was swallowed by the FBI's hunt for the Barrow Gang, and now Dillinger and the Barkers and every last one of America's most popular criminals are taking all his time.

He has to give them up. He'll never find them. He doesn't know where they are, he'll never know where they go.

They're gone, vanished like the ghosts they probably always were.

* * * * *

And where did they go?

Most accounts say that Chris holed up at Steve Carlson's place in Kentucky for a while. It's a logical assumption - he'd never committed a crime in that state and Steve had already successfully hidden them once. Some say he took up boxing again. One source puts him in Colorado in 1937, running a gym. Some say the FBI caught up with him and threw him in jail.

Some accounts say Chad went to Los Angeles, changed his name, and became an actor. Some say he went to Chicago, some say Montreal, some say New York, and some say – most improbably – that he fetched up in Georgia, driving untaxed moonshine for bootleggers and racing in the nascent southern stock car circuit. There are a couple of contemporary accounts of a racer calling himself Mayhem Michaels, but as to whether or not that was really Chad, no one can say for sure. Some think the FBI caught up with him as well, and that he ended his days in prison.

As for Jared and Jensen, who can say? Did they find a house of their own, some land, horses and dogs? Did they go to Mexico? Or Canada? Did they travel farther afield? No one knows.

And so this is where their story ends, with the two of them heading down the road in the wine-colored Ford, the last car Jared ever stole, driving out of history and into the myths that plagued their contemporaries, the shroud of mystery that protects them still.

**Author's Note:**

> I could never have done this myself. I owe a bunch of people big sloppy thanks:
> 
> annkiri for excitable, helpful beta duties  
> nuka_winch for her [fabulous, fabulous graphics and soundtrack](http://nuka-winch.livejournal.com/38135.html), and for having the foresight to start working on them while I fucked off to Texas on vacation and couldn't send her my draft or anything for a week  
> wrenlet, crotalus_atrox, ephemera, and Katy for being very patient, interested (and occasionally enabling) audiences and letting me babble all over myself  
> neecerie for the info about Pearl Brewery and Alamo Foods  
> bleedtoblue for pics of the landscape outside Abilene  
> wendy and thehighwaywoman, mods supreme, for running spn_j2_bigbang in the first place and thus giving me a reason and an opportunity to write the damn fic  
> And my dad, for educating me on gunshot wounds
> 
> Ridiculous author's notes [here](http://tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com/1333353.html) and [here](http://tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com/1339085.html), and extras - ie, photos of cars :D - [here](http://tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com/1333750.html).


End file.
